Harry Potter Without Harry Potter
by Nim-the-Lesser
Summary: Suppose Tom Riddle never bothers to show mercy, and Harry Potter dies with his parents? What would that mean for the world, to have no Boy-Who-Lived to save them? ("A couple of stubborn kids" just doesn't have the same ring to it.)
1. The Prophecy

_January 2nd, 1980_

_S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D_

_Dark Lord and (?) Harry J. Potter_

* * *

><p><strong>THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD APPROACHES<strong>

**BORN TO THOSE WHO HAVE THRICE DEFIED HIM**

**BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES**

**HE SHALL HAVE POWER THE DARK LORD KNOWS NOT**

**AND EACH SHALL DIE AT THE HAND OF THE OTHER**

**FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER DIES**

**AND NEITHER CAN DIE WHILE THE OTHER YET LIVES**

**THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD WILL BE BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES**


	2. The Potters

Lily Potter liked to pretend she knew everything.

She did, after all, know a great many things.

She knew how to drive a car and how to brew a perfect Calming Draught and exactly how many pages there were in _Hogwarts, A History _and which foot to stand on if you were casting shield spells against bombardment versus against curses. She knew how to operate a pay telephone and how to get to Diagon Alley with your fingertips if you've forgotten your wand, and she knew her sister hated her for it. (She also knew how to pretend not to care.) She knew how many times an average witch or wizard could Apparate in a day and how high they'd bounce from, and how to fix them when they didn't.

Lily Potter knew perfectly well she was in a great deal of danger.

After all, the Dark Lord was personally trying to kill them. James had thought it flattering, up until he found out it meant he had to hide, instead of fight. It had taken her weeks to convince him this was the right decision, though it might have gone more smoothly if she hadn't been trying to convince herself at the same time. Even now he still kept asking, over and over.

"Why are we _here_, Lily? Why can't we do _something_?" he would say.

She knew the answer, though she didn't like it. _He _knew the answer, too, but she didn't begrudge him his frustration. "Because it's not just us," she would explain, again. "It's Harry that's in danger, too." She didn't mind answering it over and over, because she needed the reminder. She sometimes suspected that James was doing it on purpose, because he knew she was frustrated too, and he was afraid she might run back outside to the battlefield, to fight. (She might have, even, if she hadn't known he would follow.) It was easy to pretend, when you were behind a Fidelius Charm, that you were not in danger. Little Pete would never betray them, and he shouldn't need to fight, they hoped; no one would even consider that they hadn't made Sirius the Secret-Keeper. So long as they stayed put and didn't do anything stupid, _they _were perfectly safe (_keep telling yourself that, maybe that'll make it true_).

"Right," James said, flat, unconvinced but trying to force conviction out of his words. Harry was important.

But even if she could convince herself _they _were safe, that James was safe, that her baby was safe - she couldn't not know that everyone else was in danger, too. James' best friend Sirius was in a great deal more danger than they were, actually, and _that_ fact, she couldn't even pretend not to know, not with all the acting skills in the world. Not when James paced and cursed and threw things. Not when he scribbled Transfiguration notes all over the newspaper - all battle spells - and then scribbled it all out and set it aflame. Not when he hovered over that mirror of his, thrumming with tension, waiting to hear a voice that was sharp and sardonic and infinitely reassuring (_"Chill your shit, Prongs, I'm not dead yet"_), never quite relaxing even to sleep. She could pretend they were safe here, but she could not pretend that a war did not rage outside their little cottage. It was impossible; Lily knew.

But if she were aware, then she had to know, too, that James sitting here making smoke-rings for Harry was a waste. When there was a war it didn't matter whether they were safe here, he ought to have been off with Sirius, wreaking havoc among the Death Eaters. He ought to have been fighting, and so should she. And so no matter how safe she could convince herself they were, she still had to cope with that little voice in her head, the one that said, _What could possibly go wrong?_, and wanted to know - she could never stand not _knowing_ - why they were sitting here. Sitting here while Sirius was fighting. While Remus and Peter and Emmeline and Edgar and Marlene (no, not Marlene, _don't think about Marlene_) fought a war. _Dumbledore's orders,_ she would have to tell herself, over and over again, and she trusted Dumbledore, of course she did, but his orders seemed hollow when people were (maybe) (_please no_) dying.

It was impossible to pretend. But what else could she do?

So Lily sang a little lullabye for her son, and pretended anyway.

Abruptly, jarringly, there was a terrible crunching sound, like a wooden matchbox car collapsing against concrete.

For a moment she wondered, incongruously, whether her husband had any idea what "concrete" was; and then she hadn't any time to wonder anything of the sort, as the door flew off its hinges. Then, in a horrible moment of clarity, Lily _knew _without a shadow of doubt that she was going to die. She pushed it off to the back of her mind; _not helpful_, she told her brain. _What do I do? __  
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Lily knew that James was itching for a fight. It'd been months, months of him pacing and writing spells and rewriting spells and rearranging the entire house with magic, because he was _bored - _he'd never been meant for peace, her stupid Quidditch hero turned soldier. So that meant that he was going to do something reckless and stupid and impossibly brave. She knew that, like she knew everything else, and she hated knowing, suddenly. It would almost have been better not to know; all the knowledge in the world wouldn't have meant she would be able to stop him. James was on his feet in a second, wand in hand, and it was much too late to tell him not to be a hero.

"Lily, it's him, run!" he shouted, because he was facing the door and she was not, though really it was just confirmation; who else could it be? As she, too, leapt from her chair and swept Harry off the ground, walls were coming out of the floor and objects were flying across the room. James was making barriers - nothing fancy, not those dramatic sweeping iron things he used to use against Death Eaters, just big blocks of material, because there wasn't time - and they were shattering as fast as he could make them. (How long before he runs out of things to Transfigure, and a Killing Curse goes right through those Shield Charms?_ Don't think about it._) "Take Harry and go!" he was saying - and she'd been expecting it but still she thought _damn you, come with me_ - "I'll hold him off!"

Lily knew that James was going to die if he stayed. It was a foregone conclusion. She knew, too, that they might both live longer if she fought; her arsenal of curses (_don't think about Sev_) might buy James entire minutes. They might have a chance - they might be able to hold out until the Order showed up. They'd done it before, more than once, even. Maybe they shouldn't have, maybe it had made them a target - _those who have thrice defied him_, her mind supplied, a fuzzy memory of Dumbledore's grim voice - but they _had _done it, they could do it again, live to fight another day ...

But Harry was a target, and more importantly, he was a target who couldn't duck.

And so she ran.

Behind her she could hear the horrible high-pitched laughter of the Dark Lord, and her husband throwing spells as fast as he could and she knew, she _knew_, it couldn't possibly be fast enough. James was an impossibly skilled fighter, but he was no match for Voldemort, not alone. She wished she didn't know that, that she could lie to herself and believe he would be fine, but she knew. She ought to help him, she _wanted _to help him, more than she'd ever wanted anything in her life ... But she'd promised, she'd promised she'd keep Harry safe, and as the tears poured down her face, she ran. She was reciting under her breath the words to every protection charm she knew, because even if there wasn't really a point (_I am going to die)_ she had to at least _try ... _

Harry was crying, too.

"Shhh, shhh, sweetheart, everything's going to be fine," she lied, and she was almost to the back door when she heard the voice. She was _so close_, the edge of the wards was _right there, _but she'd have to _turn _to Apparate, put Harry right in the path of a curse -

"Give me the boy," hissed Lord Voldemort, and Lily knew James was dead.

"No!" she said on reflex, and without even really making any conscious decision, she was wrapped around her son. She was a fighter, sure, but she'd never been as good as James, she was really a Healer like Frank (_oh god he and Alice are probably going to die too_) and so the part of her brain that still worked logically told her firmly that fighting would not work. She'd already cast every protection charm she could think of on Harry, even the experimental ones she and Remus had been working on that hadn't been tested properly. And so the only option left was to plead. "No, please, not Harry, please, don't, kill me instead, not Harry - " Her baby was crying and Lily could not help him, she could do _nothing_, and that broke her heart, and all she could do was beg, even though she knew it would do her son no good.

(Lily Potter knew a lot of things, but in the end it had done her no good.)

Voldemort's laugh, high and derisive, sounded in her ears as her vision swam. "You are a fool," he told her. "Did you suppose that I would kill you and leave, because you asked?" A cruel smile curved his mouth. "It is really rather unfortunate. Severus will be sad. _Avada kedavra_!"

And Lily Potter knew no more.


	3. Wormtail & Padfoot

Sirius stood in the hallway of Peter's little hideout with a sick feeling in his gut. He'd only gone to check, no real reason. He'd had a free moment, and he hadn't checked on Peter in awhile; he kept forgetting that he couldn't trust Remus to do it anymore. Not since the screaming match after the last Order meeting, during which they had gone through an entire laundry list of slurs at one another - _halfblood inbred liar self-absorbed werewolf murderer traitor traitor traitor - _and which Remus had ended by telling him to stay away from James and completely ruining Sirius' comeback by Disapparating on the spot. (Sometimes Sirius hated magic.) Only, no one had answered when he knocked on Peter's door, so he'd let himself in with the spare key, figuring he'd find Peter asleep, maybe make the poor sod some tea and steal his _Daily Prophet. _

There were no signs of a struggle here, nothing broken. One might be excused for thinking nothing was wrong; the linens were neatly folded (persnickety creature, Peter Pettigrew), the dishes were washed and stacked. The door was intact, the lock was still functioning, the raggedy furniture was all in its place. Nothing was scuffed, nothing was so much as jostled. And yet - the fridge was empty, the fireplace was cold. The armchair by the fire was covered in a very thin layer of dust. Nothing had been disturbed, probably for _days_.

And Peter was gone.

"_Shit_," he said aloud, and the sound echoed strangely in the silence.

He turned and bolted out the door again, not bothering to lock it behind him.

Mentally he thanked Caradoc Dearborn for forcing him to practice Apparating with his bike; otherwise he'd have spent hours flying to Godric's Hollow, or lost precious minutes running the distance from the edge of the anti-Apparition wards. As it was he left the street outside Peter's flat building with an echoing _crack_ and landed already moving, accelerating through the gate. His mirror was back at his flat, it was fragile and he spent way too much time getting blown into walls for that to be a good idea, but suddenly he desperately wished he had it, because he was losing seconds. Very suddenly, he felt like he understood _exactly _why James was always so twitchy when he was late getting back from a fight. At least the bike traveled fast. Faster than a broomstick, or he would never have bothered.

As the Fidelius Charm shimmered and the house appeared before him, he saw that this door, unlike Peter's, had been broken down.

"No," said Sirius, as if saying it could make it not true, "_no_."

He was running, jumping off the bike without regard for brakes and letting it skid across the driveway. He'd forgotten about it by the time he reached the steps, praying to any god who might listen, _please no - _

And he froze in the doorway.

There wasn't any furniture anymore, or at least none that was still _shaped _like furniture. There were barely-Euclidean shapes scattered everywhere, half-Transfigured shields blown to pieces. The debris of the kind of fight that few people walked away from - Sirius could count on one hand the people he knew to be capable of Transfiguration combat, and have two fingers left. Dumbledore and McGonagall, both at Hogwarts this very moment, probably smiling hollowly and discussing tactics over their Halloween feast ... and James Potter. Which meant (no) James had had to fight (_no_) and hadn't been able to put everything back together again afterwards (_no no no_) -

- and there he was, crumpled on the ground in a way that bodies just didn't bend when they were alive. "No," said Sirius, this time out loud. He heard his voice break, and didn't care. "No, no, no - " as if denying it would help, but James' eyes were open and glassy and empty, and shaking him would not wake him up, no matter how much he begged. This wasn't supposed to happen, this was the whole reason Sirius was fighting, this was why he went around bragging that the Potters had made _him_ their Secret-Keeper and daring the Death Eaters to come after him (don't pay attention to Peter), to prevent exactly this from happening. How - _how -_

And then it hit him, like the speeding Hogwarts Express.

Don't mention Peter, Peter's not important, we never think of Peter, _I forgot about - _"Peter." The little bastard. Not Remus at all, not the obvious spy, of course it wasn't the obvious spy. They'd spent half an hour screaming at each other and it had been _Wormtail _all along, scurrying off, saying nothing. Not the werewolf (too much a librarian), not the Black (too much a Gryffindor). The boy who turned into a rat because he liked to know things, because he liked people's secrets, because he _liked to be a spy ..._ how had they not noticed? How had they not _seen - _

"Sirius!" said a voice, and he very nearly hit Rubeus Hagrid squarely in the stomach with a Cutting Hex that would have been neck height on an ordinary man. He cut off the reflexive motion just in time, eyes wide with adrenaline, as he wheeled to see the Hogwarts gamekeeper emerge from the blown-out hole of the upper floors, looking grimmer than Sirius had thought he was capable of. "Ya heard?"

"Hagrid," said Sirius, in a rather shaky voice, "Where're Lily and Harry?"

The look on the half-giant's face told him all he needed to know.

He turned and ran. He'd forgotten completely about his bike, he just ran down the steps and down the drive and out the gate, letting the house fade behind him (_maybe if you don't think about it it won't have happened), _and running faster than he could remember ever running before. He didn't even know where he was going; he just knew that if he stopped he'd probably just curl up in a ball of self-loathing and never move again. Where _could _he go? James was dead. Lily was dead. Harry was dead. The anchors around which his world revolved were gone. What was he going to _do _with his life? There was no point in fighting this stupid war anymore, the Potters were dead and Remus hated him and Peter -

Oh.

Peter was going to die.

That was what drove him, then, after his panic ran out and was taken over by murder.

_Have to find Peter._

Peter was going to die.

_Run._

Sirius was going to kill him.

_Run._

Sirius was going to rip the traitor's heart out through his ribcage and blast it to bits.

_Stop crying and run._

Sirius did not have time for crying.

_Run._

Peter was going to die.

_What have you done? _

Sirius did not have time to think about how stupid it had been for him to suggest this plan. He should have just done it himself, he shouldn't have tried to be clever. He shouldn't have let his desire to keep being involved rule him; he should have done the Fidelius and locked himself in a room and not come out until the war was over and James and Lily and Harry were safe. Should have, should have, should have.

_You're a murderer, Sirius Black._

He'd killed people before, in battle. You couldn't avoid it, in a war like this. It wasn't even illegal, not with an Auror badge. He'd never enjoyed it - fighting was fun until it was over, and then you stood around panting and bleeding and counting dead bodies to make your report to Director Crouch. That part was always the worst; he and James had gotten horribly drunk after the first time they'd had to do it, and Remus had made them tea in the morning and not said a word.

Edgar Bones always used to say that it was only murder if you didn't schedule it first. (Bureaucratic arse. Sirius missed him.)

So Sirius had murdered the Potters; they weren't supposed to die and it was his fault that they had.

Sirius was going to murder Peter, and he was going to enjoy every second of it.

_Run, murderer, run. _

In the future, when asked, he would never be able to explain how, exactly, he'd found Peter Pettigrew. But he found him, all the same. There was probably magic involved, for all that he didn't remember doing any. He must have done tracking spells, and anti-Apparition jinxes, and any number of things, to catch a wizard who didn't want to be found. Conspiracy theorists would later use it as so-called proof that the event had been preplanned, because tracking spells were extremely obscure and extremely complicated and had to be tuned to a person through extended effort. Remus Lupin, for his part, would later feel guilty about teaching Sirius to do it, years ago, with Peter as a practice target. But Sirius didn't know and never would; he only remembered the running.

Sirius found Peter in the middle of a Muggle street. There were Muggles all around, already turning to look at the man sprinting through their midst. This was a blatant breach of the International Statute of Secrecy, but he found that he didn't care in the slightest. He was so far past caring that he barely even registered that there were Muggles around. They could be Obliviated, they could die for all he cared, he had to kill Peter, Peter had to die, Peter was _going to die for this_ -

"Lily and James, Sirius?" shrieked Peter, "how could you?"

Sirius actually stopped, frozen with his wand raised, and stared. Sheer bafflement crossed his face, so powerful that it overrode his fury for just a split second, before his arrested motion continued. A split second, however was just long enough, or just slightly too long. A split second later, while Sirius was still wide-eyed with shock, Peter exploded, and the entire street with him.

Sirius burst out laughing.

It was too much; there was only so much stress a man's mind could take before he didn't _have _any other responses. There was too much adrenaline in his body for him to collapse, and too little energy to do anything else. He'd never imagined he would be the last one alive. He'd always assumed it would be Remus and Lily, competent and sane and eminently responsible, who would outlive the rest of their cohort. His whole life had been built around the Marauders, and then the Potters; even had he been conscious enough to make decisions, he wouldn't have known what to do, where to go. He might have tried to kill himself, except that some part of him refused to go out the same way as Peter had. So he stood there, awash in the blood of innocent bystanders, and laughed.

When the Aurors found Sirius, he was still standing there, trapped in his own hysteria.

_You're a murderer, Sirius Black. _


	4. So Did We Win?

Minerva McGonagall was looking at him with a terrible, sad expression.

Albus dearly wished he could do something about that. There were a lot of things he wished he could do something about, frankly, but he was not nearly as omniscient as everyone seemed to think he was. He could not bring people back from the dead, he could not make his students stop being heroes. He could not, though he wished with all his might that he could, smile and tell Minerva it was all a mistake, that the Potters were alive after all and a one-year-old boy and his parents had not been murdered twelve hours ago in cold blood. How dearly he wished it had not happened, for all that he had known it was coming. He had, perhaps selfishly, hoped that at least one of the parents would live - though he knew that neither Lily nor James would have wanted to outlive the rest of their little family. All he could do was say, "I'm so sorry, Minerva."

She sighed, like she'd been hoping for something better but not really expected it. "The entire wizarding world is in an uproar, of course," the Deputy Headmistress said. Fireworks everywhere. And the defeat of Lord Voldemort had been the headline of the Evening _Prophet._ You couldn't avoid it, not when Albus and Rubeus Hagrid had delivered _four _bodies to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for burial - the three Potters and the Dark Lord. The people on duty had all started crying and cheering more or less simultaneously, and the reporters had found out almost instantly. "Everyone knows that the Potters are heroes," Minerva continued unhappily, "of course everyone's heard that they killed Voldemort, but no one seems to recall that they're _dead_, Albus." As well he knew. Dead and gone, never to return. Two of the brightest students he'd seen in years, strong and courageous and righteous, everything Godric Gryffindor had wanted in his students ... snuffed out in a heartbeat, like candles left out in the rain.

The headmaster managed a wise smile, though it was shaky. "They will never truly die," he said, as firmly as he could, "not so long as we remember them." He believed that, though maybe only because he might have gone mad decades ago if he didn't. _You didn't kill me_, said Gellert's voice in the back of his head, _what does that say about all your pretty words, hmm? _(Sometimes he wondered, to himself, if killing the old Dark Lord would silence his voice, or make it louder.) _  
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"But that poor little boy..." sighed Minerva sadly. Harry Potter had been only a year old, and despite being a child of prophecy, despite all the experimental shields Lily had put on him, it would seem he had died as easily as any other helpless child. Albus had checked all three wands left at the scene, and gotten a fairly clear picture of what had happened. James' indicated a protracted duel, and Lily's had cast a veritable battery of protective charms, including some they hadn't yet tested properly, or at all. She must have been desperate. And she had reason; Voldemort's wand's last three spells had been three Killing Curses, in quick succession. Lily had been protecting Harry until she died, not defending herself. Neither of the Potters would have been foolish enough to stick around and fight if both Harry and their partner were dead; and either of them was quick enough on their feet to get across the wardlines and Disapparate, if that had been the case.

So Harry had died last; why, then, was Voldemort dead, too? None of the Aurors had bothered to wonder. Director Crouch didn't bother with curiosity; he was too old and too tired and much too cold for that. He only did his job. Alastor and Amelia were much the same, after this long, and they'd been the ones on duty at the time. They'd barely even cheered with the rest of the department; only sighed with a sort of muted relief, and gone to do their work. But Albus did wonder, what had happened. It had to be the prophecy, but in practice, prophecies didn't have _power_, only predictive accuracy; there had to be a force there. _Something _had killed Voldemort.

Lacking any other evidence, he supposed it must have been Lily.

"I suppose it was foolish of me," said Albus aloud, with a sigh. "To assume that Harry Potter would destroy Voldemort of his own volition - or to assume that he would survive the conflict."

"Of course," said Minerva, looking annoyed, and Albus couldn't blame her, not one bit. She'd been telling him for months how absurd it was that a little boy would have anything to do with the defeat of Voldemort. _Babies don't win wars,_ she'd told him irritably the last time they talked about it, and pushed his attention towards diagrams of strategy she'd been working on with Alastor. Lily Evans had had a bet on with Remus Lupin that there'd be time travel involved. "That's ridiculous, Albus," she repeated for the thousandth time. "I am frankly astonished that you ever believed such a thing." She was giving him a stern, reproving look now, the sort of look she gave him whenever he offered her a lemon drop in the middle of a tirade about Peeves.

"I am well aware," he said with a sigh, rubbing his temples. Of course it was ridiculous, but they did live in a world where you could go to the store and buy spinach-flavoured jelly beans and not have anyone think that was weird. By any objective measure, _everything _in the wizarding world was ridiculous."But the facts remain: after Lily and James died, Voldemort was sufficiently alive to kill Harry, and doing so killed him." McGonagall was giving him a very strange look, now. Well, the truth had been strange. Lily Potter and Remus Lupin had been working on some very interesting new charms in the weeks before the Potters' death (Lily hadn't believed that Remus could be a spy, and they ought to have listened to her; everyone had been too busy laughing over the time travel bet, the more fools they). Protection charms that would not just block but fight back ... Remus said they hadn't finished anything, but Lily had been desperate enough to try incomplete spells, and it was possible that something she'd done had made the Killing Curse kill both target and caster. "Some kind of terrible magic happened that night - what, we are not yet sure. But it is enough to make me wonder."

"But surely _Harry _didn't ... " Minerva sighed, and visibly gave up on the problem. "It doesn't matter, does it."

Albus had to admit that it didn't seem all that important, when everyone involved was dead, no matter what the cause. He would not be able to _ask _Lily Potter what she had done. But Voldemort was dead, and that was all that mattered, he hoped. _If he really is dead,_ that voice in his head that sounded like Gellert needled. _Can you be sure of that, Albus? Can you be really sure? _Still - "I suppose not."

"It _is_ over, then?" Minerva asked, begging with her eyes that the answer be yes, that she would be forced to watch no more of her students charge bravely into battle and die terrible deaths. _The Prewetts, the Boneses, the McKinnons, the Potters, Peter... no more, please, Albus, no more, _she was saying. They had all been so young.

But he shook his head, because he had to, and so he had to watch as she despaired. "There are Death Eaters still, Minerva," he said. In his ears his voice sounded old, and tired. But cutting off the head would not kill the snake, not quickly enough. Death Eaters would panic, and panic meant violence. There would be fighting, and chasing, and yet more death, before they could begin to relax and rebuild and perhaps properly grieve. Albus stood, stretching his aging bones, and sighed again. "There is work yet to do."

(And amid that work, and the Longbottoms the next day, and yet more work, he never did go back to the Potter cottage in Godric's Hollow. Many years in the future, he would wish that he had.)


	5. The Greatest Failure

Another day, another crisis.

Albus Dumbledore really wished that people would stop expecting him to solve all of their problems. Everyone seemed to think he was capable of the impossible, and as a result he found himself spending all too much time staring at problems he didn't actually have any idea how to fix. It was painful, to do that all the time. Sometimes there was nothing you could really do. Sometimes you had to tell Amelia Bones that her little brother was dead, and there was no way to make that hurt less. Sometimes you had to take Alice and Frank Longbottom to St. Mungo's and the Lestranges to Azkaban, when Azkaban would never be punishment enough. And sometimes ... well, sometimes you promised reluctant Death Eaters you'd help them, and failed. _  
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"What do I do now, Headmaster?" asked Severus Snape, standing in the doorway of his office, looking lost.

_What can any of us do?_

_How are you the one that survived, Severus? Out of all the students in your graduating class. Half are dead and half are in Azkaban, and ... you. _He suspected Severus was wondering the same thing. This had never been a boy who expected to survive the war. He'd probably had grand plans to throw himself dramatically at Lily Evans' feet and die for her. He'd turned spy for selfish reasons and not expected to survive the experience; but he _had _done it, and so Albus had spoken on his behalf before the Wizengamot, and here he was, with nothing to do with his life.

"I don't know, Severus," he said heavily, because he didn't. And then, because there was nothing else to say, he said, "I am sorry for your loss."

"Sorry?" hissed the ex-Death Eater, his wand hand curling into a fist. His whole face curled around his anger. It was almost intimidating, but mostly it was terribly sad. "I threw myself at your feet and begged, and _you didn't save her_, headmaster, you didn't even _try_."

Albus sighed. You'd think he'd never failed a single task in his life, the way people assumed he could do anything. "I assure you I tried," he said sadly. His voice sounded so old. When had he gotten old? "I am not God, Severus."

"You should be!" Severus snapped.

There was a heavy silence, during which Albus gazed steadily at his former student and waited patiently for the storm to pass. Severus glared at him, shaking; and then, abruptly, he collapsed heavily in the chair in front of the headmaster's desk. It was like watching a tree in the Forest, struck by lightning, crumble into so much burnt dust.

"I'm sorry," the young man said quietly, "that was uncalled for."

"It was," agreed Albus, steepling his fingers on the desk and willing his headache to go away. It didn't, so he instread tried to ignore it. Then, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, he had an idea. "Professor Slughorn is retiring this year," he said, as gently as he could. Severus had always been good with potions, and maybe a steady job would be good for him. Maybe _people _would be good for him. Maybe anything would be good for him, really, that wasn't sitting alone in his mother's vacant house, wishing the world had been different. Maybe this was a terrible suggestion, but Albus really _did _need someone to do it. "Perhaps you would consent to be his replacement?"

Severus shrugged. "It's not as though I have anything better to do with my life," he said bitterly, glaring at the desk.

"Stop that," said Albus sharply, giving his old student a stern look. The effect was mostly lost, since Severus wasn't looking at him, but he carried on all the same. The others were dead or gone, but if he said the right words, perhaps _this _student could be saved. And so he had to try. "There is always something to do with your life," he said, and then, "Make it so that Lily Potter's sacrifice was not in vain." Make it so that _someone _from your generation actually survives this mess. _Please_. "I hope and pray that Harry Potter _was_ the prophesied child, that Voldemort is dead and gone, but if not - "

"What?" interrupted Severus, looking up at him in sudden alarm. "What do you mean, if _not_? He's dead."

"I have learned, Severus," said Albus grimly, "never to assume." Because when you made assumptions, it would always come back to bite you. And then more people died, and Albus had too much blood on his hands already. "By all appearances Harry Potter and Voldemort killed one another that day in Godric's Hollow, thus fulfilling the prophecy - but it bothers me, perhaps more than it should, that it seemed so easy."

The expression of fury came back over Severus' face in a flash (_what do you mean, easy_), and Albus shook his head quellingly.

"That's not what I mean, Severus, and you know that." The precious cost of lives was never pleasant to pay, never anything but wrenching, but it was often very easy indeed. They were so fragile, these children he had raised to fight a war. "I simply cannot shake the feeling that the child was meant to grow up, that it's not yet over." And he couldn't, not at all. It was only that there was a nagging feeling in the back of his head that said, _You are forgetting something_, and no matter how much he combed his Pensieve, he did not know what it was. "But for now - we must go on with our lives, Severus." Else they would spend whole lifetimes in grief, and Albus had learned long ago that grieving didn't help the people who were still alive.

Severus closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and Albus waited patiently for the man to come to terms with the situation. It was a long wait, there was a great deal to come to terms with. Severus had lost so much. He had been a Death Eater, but he was still one of Albus' students, and he had, in the end, done the right thing, if even for the wrong reasons; and so Albus would do what he could to help him. Eventually the Slytherin's eyes opened, and he looked at Albus uncertainly. "You want me to teach Potions, headmaster?" he asked, frowning. "_Teach_?"

"Certainly," said Albus, though he was far from certain. "You have always been exceptional in the subject."

Severus managed to crack a smile. Progress. "You plan to trust me with _children_?" he asked, dramatically aghast. If there was one thing Severus Snape had had in common with James Potter other than an excessive fondness for Lily Evans, it was that hopeless, incorrigible tendency towards dramaticism.

In response, Albus's eyes twinkled mischievously. If they could joke, they could survive. "With Horace retiring, I need you!" he said. "After all, what would a magical school be, without at least one evil teacher?"

At that, Severus did laugh. It was a strained laugh, and he looked shocked at himself, but it was there. Albus beamed at him. If they could laugh, then perhaps everything would be alright.

Eventually.


	6. That Bloody Jinx

"You know, you could just have me do it," said Severus for what felt like the thousandth time, sitting in the headmaster's office. It was deeply reassuring, ten years later, to see him sitting there, looking almost comfortable. Severus was never _completely _comfortable anywhere, but it seemed like finally he'd started to at least think of Hogwarts as his home, as somewhere he actually belonged. The shadow of Lily Potter had never quite left him, but he at least didn't dwell on it every second of the day, anymore. Among his ideas, Albus liked to think that convincing Severus Snape to be a teacher was at least one of his successful ones.

Albus sighed, again. "You know I can't do that," he said, rehearsing an old argument. He usually pointed out that Potions professors were harder to replace than Defense professors, and in ten years he'd never found anyone who could take the job he'd given Severus. The Head of Slytherin House _would _make a fine Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Albus suspected, if not a happy one. Severus knew he would do it better than some of the failures they'd had of late, which was why they kept having this argument. But even if Albus _could _find a new Potions Master - "I need you for longer than a year, Severus."

Severus snorted disdainfully at this objection. Once he stopped being terrified of the headmaster, he'd begun to betray a rather refreshing sharp wit. It was a nice balance to Filius' persistent cheer, Pomona's quiet steadiness, and Minerva's stubborn rightness. "Oh, honestly, you cannot _really_ believe - "

"Severus, I have not been able to keep a single Defense professor for longer than a year since I refused the position to Tom Riddle thirty years ago. Not _one,_" said Albus pointedly. "Yes, I _do_ honestly believe that there is magic at work here." At first he'd thought it a simple hazard of wartime; the sort of people who could teach Defense classes were often also the sort of people who tended to get into fights with Death Eaters, trying to defend other people. Then he'd thought it a coincidence, when it kept happening, too regularly to be statistically likely. But when his sixteenth Defense teacher in sixteen years, otherwise completely competent, had somehow managed to _burn himself to death_, he had given up and admitted there must be some sort of outside intervention at work. (And people were starting to be wary, around then; Professor Winchester had not been the first former Auror to take the post, but he _had _probably been the last.)

Severus sighed, recognizing an argument he was not going to win. He chose a different tack. "But really, Headmaster, _Quirrell_?" He spat the name with disgust, and Albus could not entirely blame him. Quirinus Quirrell was the Muggle Studies professor, or rather, he _had_ been the Muggle Studies professor up until last year, when he had taken a sabbatical to Albania, and come back even more jumpy and frightened than before. With an irritating stammer, no less, and a pronounced fear of vampires. Perfect qualifications for a Defense professor, of course. (Sigh.)

"He is competent," said Albus, which Severus seemed to think was an overestimation. Rather pointedly, he added, "and more importantly, he is the only person I have yet found who is interested in the job."

"Except me," pointed out Severus. It wasn't that he didn't _like _Potions, Albus knew. He would have been delighted to teach only NEWT classes, but tended to describe his younger students as, quote, _unconscionably stupid. _He would much prefer, he insisted, teaching a class in which he did not need to try to instruct students in anything likely to cause large explosions until at least fifth year. But as much as Severus did not believe him, Albus still suspected that his potions master would be rather unhappy as a Defense professor. Too little of his favorite subject, and too many reminders of the war.

"You," objected Albus, "are useful."

"And here I thought you merely enjoyed my company," said Severus dryly, almost rolling his eyes. _Of course I am useful, why else would you keep me around? _Severus still hadn't quite grasped the fact that Albus genuinely cared about his well-being. There's Slytherins, for you. "You have, at least, found someone to take up the Muggle Studies post, I trust?" Quirrell's sabbatical had been covered by Matt Savage, a diminutive and cheerful Auror who had been recovering from an injury, but the energetic wizard had refused a permanent post either in Muggle Studies or in Defense. To exactly no one's surprise, he'd headed right back to active duty the moment all his limbs were functioning correctly. "Or would you like me to be _useful _and teach that as well? I would be just _delighted_."

Albus nodded, pretending he was deaf to the biting sarcasm. He was too used to the potions master's ingrained acerbity, by now, to take it very seriously. "Charity Burbage has assented to teach our Muggle Studies classes."

"I don't recognize the name," said Severus, mildly surprised. Being the Head of House Slytherin was the sort of job that forced you to have a very strong grasp of wizarding genealogy. With eyebrows rising, he asked curiously, "Did you actually manage to find a _Muggleborn_ this time?"

Albus beamed. This had been Severus' favorite point of argument about Quirrell, who was pureblood and only slightly less baffled by Muggles than Arthur Weasley. Students' ability to pass the OWLs had tended to be rather dependent upon their ability to read their textbooks. Albus had eventually sent the professor on sabbatical when the number of complaints by Muggleborn and half-blood students had surpassed five in a single year. But this time - "I _did, _as a matter of fact!" he said proudly.

Severus reluctantly agreed that this was a good thing, and reassuring.

"Oh," added Albus, "but do keep an _eye_ on Quirinius, would you?" When Quirrell had returned from his trip, he'd not quite been the _same._ More to the point, he'd ticked about two dozen of the boxes on Mad-Eye's "Suspicious Behavior" list.

(Severus did not find _that_ reassuring at all.)


	7. It's A Trap, I Swear!

"This cannot _possibly_ be a good idea," said Severus flatly.

Minerva nodded firmly. "I must say I agree, Albus." For once the Gryffindor and Slytherin Heads were in complete accord. It felt a little strange to Minerva, really. It wasn't that she didn't get along with Severus, of course, but his students were a constant thorn in her side. Albus had (probably accurately) observed that even Salazar himself would not have been able to fix the Dark shadow hovering around the Slytherins of the last few generations, not without summarily executing half of them, but it was still a source of conflict, and she couldn't remember the last time she and Severus had been entirely in agreement about something.

In any case. Bad ideas, see also: The Philosopher's Stone, and Albus' mad plan to bring it from Gringotts to Hogwarts via Rubeus Hagrid.

"Hagrid is perfectly trustworthy," insisted Albus cheerfully, "and Hogwarts is the safest place in the world, they say. Everything will be fine!"

Severus stared at him in clear astonishment. Minerva felt much the same way. "Actually," the potions master objected, speaking slowly, as if to a child, "I was talking about the part of the plan where we _tell everyone on staff_."

"Ah, but Severus, it is a trap!"

Silence.

Both professors stared at him blankly.

Albus twinkled merrily, waiting for someone to ask. Minerva wasn't sure she was up to it, really.

"What?" asked Severus finally, cautiously.

Apparently, Albus had decided that everything would be twice as fun if he pretended to be crazy. Or, Minerva supposed, he might actually be going crazy. (She wasn't quite sure which was worse.) The headmaster said, as if this were an explanation, "Surely you have heard the proverb that says, 'the best way to keep a secret among three people' - "

" - is to kill two of them, yes," agreed Severus, ignoring Minerva's slightly scandalized gasp. Surely he wasn't implying that he was going to kill Hagrid? "What is your point?"

"Why, of course," smiled Albus, "by contrast, the easiest way to be sure a secret gets out is to tell as many people about it as possible!"

Minerva caught up. More or less. "You mean you _want_ people to know that you are hiding the Philosopher's Stone inside Hogwarts?" _Why_? She wanted to ask. What purpose could that _possibly_ serve? Albus wasn't usually the sort for pointless braggadocio, at least in her experience.

"Of course not," replied Albus, still unreasonably cheerful, "that would be silly. Everyone would want it."

There was another awkward silence.

"Ah, I see," said Severus, and Minerva's gaze snapped to him, utterly astonished.

"You see? What do you see? This makes no sense!" she protested.

"That is because you are not a Slytherin, Minerva," Severus said in a tone that, for him, might even have been an attempt at being gentle. "The Philosopher's Stone will not actually be hidden behind the elaborate traps we will set up. It will be a monitoring device of some kind, designed to tell us who steals it." He glanced at the headmaster for confirmation.

"Precisely!" said Albus, beaming.

Minerva was boggled. No, indeed, she was not a Slytherin. She had been offered Ravenclaw as a child, yes, but she was a _Gryffindor. _She could handle military strategy - and she'd found she was quite good at chess, when she tried after the war was over - but plotting of this type was foreign to her. That was for Severus and Alastor Moody and Augusta Longbottom, for the clever Slytherins to whom complex dramas were bread and butter and wine. Still, it unnerved her to be quite so lost. Augusta, at least, usually _explained _her plots (though Minerva was still not completely sure she understood the series of bribes and blackmail that had been involved in the, ahem, _suicide _of Lucretia Black-Prewett). This one didn't seem to have gotten any less confusing with explanation. "What? Why?"

Severus, thankfully, took pity on her confusion and kept explaining. "If there is one thing that we can count on Death Eaters to want desperately, it is the Philosopher's Stone," he said. "After all, they're all fundamentally self-absorbed, and if ever there was an easier ticket to a selfishly comfortable life than endless gold and immortality, I cannot name it." Minerva noted with interest and approval that Severus was now referring to the Death Eaters as _they_, rather than _we_. He continued, "We can safely expect that any who find out will attempt to steal it." Reasonable enough. She nodded. "Therefore, a theft gives us useful information about who is and is not trustworthy. For example, if Lucius Malfoy were the thief, one might safely assume that I was the one who had told him."

Minerva blinked, and assimilated all that, and nodded again. "I - alright, I suppose that makes sense, although I still don't see why it's quite necessary. Am I to assume that Nicholas Flamel is still in possession of the Stone itself?"

"You may assume that," smiled Albus, and the way he was twinkling at her told Minerva that even if she assumed that, it wouldn't be true.

She sighed. It was probably best just to go back to planning her lessons, and leave all this Slytherining to people who understood it.


	8. Memories

Remus Lupin was starting to wish he hadn't ever come back to Diagon Alley. He'd thought it might be good for him, taking in some magic, being reminded that the wizarding world did exist in places other than his dreams. Working in a Muggle library sometimes made it hard to remember. Sometimes he spent days without touching his wand, avoiding the thought, pretending Hogwarts had been a dream. After all, Remus Lupin the Muggle librarian had never seen friends shredded in front of him, had never had to attend more funerals in the course of a year than anyone should have to attend in a lifetime. But sometimes he woke up drenched in sweat and bolted to the kitchen and made tea without touching the kettle and couldn't let go of his wand for hours, terrified that it _had _been a dream, that all his friends were figments of his imagination. The latter had been happening more often as of late - he'd begun to wonder if he was crazy - and he'd thought it might help to come back, just for a little while, see how everything had changed. A few minutes of walking down the street, unfortunately, had disabused him of that notion.

Diagon Alley had not much changed. Diagon Alley was full of memories.

Quality Quidditch Supplies, which pulled his friends like a magnet. In a better world, he thought, James might have played in the League, if the world had not needed him to fight. Edgar would have been a novelist and Helen would have been a dancer and Frank would have been a Healer and Alice would probably still have been an Auror and Sirius - (don't think about Sirius)

_"You don't need a new broom, you've already got one."_

_"Yeah, but this one's better, and don't tell me you don't think Malfoy hasn't already got - "_

_"He does, Narcissa won't shut up about it, you know." _

(But Sirius was inextricably entangled with all his happy memories.)

Here the potions shop, where inevitably James would stop to stare longingly, even if they had plenty of ingredients in their kits and no need to go there, and whine for the next few hours about Lily's choices in friends.

_"Don't know WHAT she sees in him, the slimy git."_

_"Better at Potions than you?"_

_"Ugh!"_

The Leaky Cauldron, full of laughter; full of people they knew, friends who were loud and bright and cheerful before they grew up too fast and had to fight a war. Everyone had grown up too fast, really, and now all he had left of the laughter was painful memories.

_"What about the laws about underage magic, you could get EXPELLED - "_

_"Oh relax, Moony, we didn't use magic..."_

_"No?"_

_"'Course not, we tricked Tom into it!"_

The inevitable mess made at Flourish & Blotts hovered against his view of the neatly stacked books, undisturbed by the antics of long-dead Marauders.

_"How, exactly, did you turn half the shelves invisible?"_

_"Beats me, let's go before we get in trouble - "_

_"I can't take you two ANYWHERE..."_

The memories turned darker as he neared Knockturn Alley, because that was where the danger came from, that was where people stopped going out at night when the war had been at its height. That was where Sirius would vanish for hours at a time, and come back without his brother, looking like he wanted to kill something. That was where James had pulled them, the first time they went out Death Eater hunting, the only time they'd brought Peter.

_"How do I - "_

_"Shut up, Peter!"_

_"But I don't - "_

_"Shut up!"_

Remus hadn't wondered, at the time, why Sirius had been so harsh to Peter for getting them spotted, throwing them unprepared into a firefight. James had been making tea with shaking hands while Sirius yelled and Remus tried to patch everyone together. Peter had never tried again to follow them into their war; James and Sirius had killed people for the first time that night, and Peter had nearly been one of them when he didn't duck fast enough. Remus had never wondered why Sirius had gotten _used _to lethal combat so much more easily than James, never wondered what it meant that Sirius could wrap a faceless Death Eater around a fence spike and laugh. He'd been too busy wondering where James' laughter had gone. And then -

"_Sirius killed Peter this morning."_

_"WHAT?"_

_"They've taken him to Azkaban - "_

_"But that's absurd, why - how - "_

He'd thought he knew him. He'd thought he knew all of them. They'd seemed so predictable, as children, as teenagers.

_"Come on, let's go watch James trip over himself trying to impress Lily."_

He'd thought - but no.

Could any of these memories tell him what had gone wrong?

The thing was, he'd been so pleased to finally have friends.

_"You're a werewolf, aren't ya, Lupin?"_

_"What? I - "_

_"Oh come off it, Potter, you're scaring him. Don't worry, Lupin, we don't care."_

Had that blinded him? Was there something, was there anything, he should have seen?

_"Remus, help, I still can't do a Cheering Charm - "_

_"Calm down, calm down. Let's practice on these two, shall we? Maybe then they'll stop whingeing about losing at Quidditch ..."_

He'd always tried to be kind, especially to Peter, because he knew what it was not to have friends. Neither of them had suspected James and Sirius to be anything but genuinely friends. Peter hadn't known, either, and that didn't make Remus feel better about his own obliviousness, not at all. He would have expected blind reckless foolishness of even Lily before he expected it of Peter, and then he'd been wrong again -

_"Peter tried to hunt down Sirius, he wanted revenge for James ... "_

_"The idiot ought to have known he'd lose that fight!"_

_"A fool, yes, but a brave fool."_

Poor Peter.

Remus thought he probably ought to go home, and stop walking through this pit of memories. Peter was dead. James and Lily were dead and their son with them, never to grow into adulthood. The Boneses, the Prewetts, the Longbottoms, the McKinnons, all gone. And Sirius ... the Sirius he had known was either dead or had never existed at all.

Here was Madam Malkin's, where Sirius had spent a half hour tormenting Regulus about his green scarf.

_"Too scared you'll be like me, eh, Reggie? Too scared not to do what Mummy and Daddy say? You'll be in Slytherin, don't worry, and good riddance - "_

And yet they'd gone the same path. They'd nearly killed each other at the last Quidditch game before graduation, they'd hated each other, anyone with eyes could see they would had died before taking orders from the same leader ... and then. How much of that hatred had been a lie, Remus wondered? Had the Black brothers been lying? (When Regulus died, James and Lily had had to actually sedate Sirius to keep him from having a dramatic and probably violent breakdown, and not everyone had been surprised.) Had Sirius been a spy all along? Had all their time at Hogwarts been a lie? (If it was, Remus maybe didn't want to know.)

Remus was pretty sure he ought to leave. This couldn't be healthy.

But the memories flowed, all the same.

_"It's, well, it's not really - we're not supposed to tell anyone - "_

_"I'm in the Order just as much as you are!"_

_"Well - "_

That was the day he knew they'd stopped trusting him, the day they'd thrown his own words ("necessary conservation of information") back at him, the words he'd used when he'd done that spy mission with the werewolves in Serbia and hadn't been able to tell them about it. They _hadn't _been under orders, they had only decided themselves that it was best he not know, in case he was a spy - and it had hurt more than any Cruciatus. He'd practically blinked and they'd all disappeared.

He really ought to stop _thinking_ about this, but -

_"Hey Moony, sorry Pomfrey wouldn't let you out, we brought you some chocolate, you feeling okay?" _

He kept walking.


	9. The Hogwarts Express

_"I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?"_

* * *

><p>"So which house d'you think you'll be?" Hermione asked, while Ron and Neville were still recovering from her extended lecture about the history of the school. Neville refrained from commenting on it aloud, but he privately thought she reminded him a bit of his grandmother. "I've looked up about all the Houses of course," she was saying excitedly, "and I think I'd like to be in Gryffindor, it sounds by far the best." Had his Gran been a Gryffindor? He sort of thought she'd been a Slytherin, actually, though she hadn't actuallysaid anything on the subject that he could recall. She <em>was<em> always wearing green, and getting people to do things for her without apparently putting forth any effort ...

"Of course it is!" said Ron, clearly seizing upon something he understood. He'd spent most of Hermione's lecture sort of staring at her in astonishment. The redheaded boy had been sitting alone when, having given up their quest to find Trevor, Neville and Hermione had asked to sit in his compartment, and Neville suspected that Ron was not finding his first introduction to Hogwarts to be at all what he'd expected. Ron said proudly, "My family's all been in Gryffindor, they're the good guys, you know, the Potters were Gryffindors."

Well, that was a fair point, Neville thought. The people who'd defeated You-Know-Who, after all, were the best sort of role model. Except for the part where they'd died, obviously.

"Really?" said Hermione with evident interest. "I didn't know that, where'd you read that?"

Ron blinked. "Er - I don't think I read it, I think maybe one of my brothers told me." The redheaded boy looked somewhat nervous. Neville couldn't blame him; he certainly hadn't been expecting to be quizzed on which of his textbooks he'd read (none of them) before term even started, either. (Were all Muggleborns like this, or just Hermione Granger? If they were all like this, he had _no idea _why purebloods acted so superior all the time.)

"Oh," said Hermione. She looked slightly disappointed. Neville wasn't really sure why. "Well... do you think you'll be in Gryffindor, then?" Ron cringed at the reminder that he'd yet to be Sorted.

"Probably," said Neville, who didn't think Ron had any cause to worry, and feeling a bit like he ought to be participating in the conversation in some way. "Houses usually run in families, so if all the Weasleys have been Gryffindors he'll probably be one too." Neville didn't mention that he had no such reassuring precedent to lean on; his father had been a Gryffindor, his mother a Ravenclaw, Gran was (probably) a Slytherin, and he was pretty sure his late grandfather had been a Hufflepuff. He didn't think he was really worthy of _any _of the Houses, and without a rule like _Weasleys are all Gryffindors_, what if the Hat just decided he wasn't good enough and sent him home -

"Oh!" said Hermione suddenly, "I wonder how close we are to school!"

"Um - " began Neville, but already Hermione had jumped from her seat. Before he could ask what she was doing, she ran out of the compartment, leaving Ron and Neville alone to try to make awkward conversation. Fortunately, she'd also left them with a subject. For this Neville was profoundly grateful. Otherwise they'd have been forced to talk about Quidditch or something, and Neville was fairly certain that most Muggleborns knew more about the sport than he did.

Ron turned to Neville. "You really think I'll be a Gryffindor?" he asked hopefully.

"Oh yeah, definitely," said Neville, wishing he could be half as confident about his own Sorting. At least thinking about Ron's was less frightening than thinking about his.

But: "What about you then?" asked Ron, of course, and Neville winced.

"Well, I mean, I hope I'm in Gryffindor, but ..." He trailed off. His voice was trembling, and he really wished it wouldn't do that. It always made Gran give him stern glares.

There was an awkward silence, which was fortunately broken several minutes later by the reappearance of Hermione. Neville noticed that Ron seemed much more annoyed about this than he himself felt. "I've just been up front to ask the conductor," the bossy girl said briskly, "and you two really ought to get changed, we're nearly there."

"Well, can you leave then?" said Ron. She sniffed at him and left in a huff.


	10. Sorting Hat

"Abbott, Hannah!"

Hannah Abbott's first thought was _why do I always have to go first, _and then after that, _I don't want to be first, Hat, I just want to be me._

_Admirable sentiment, _said the Hat, and Hannah would have squeaked if she weren't being prevented by the Hat's magic from speaking aloud. She hadn't really, _actually _been expecting it to talk to her. _So then, child, what does it mean to be you?_

_Um, _thought Hannah. She had never been asked anything so momentous before in her entire life, and she had no idea how to form proper words for it, to describe how she loved her mum and wanted to make friends and was sort of terrified that she'd accidentally make friends her mum wouldn't like and how she wanted to be a Healer because she wanted to help people but she didn't know if that was a proper answer or not, and what if it sent her to Slytherin because she didn't have a sensible answer, she'd try to be friends with them of course but her mother was Muggleborn and it would be so _awkward _-

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

><p>"Bones, Susan!"<p>

Susan approached the Hat rather more sedately than the first girl had, and sat down calmly, and donned the Hat, and thought, _Excuse me, but do you know why people are so against cross-House friendships? _The thing was, her parents had been from two different Houses (the House of Bones had been Hufflepuff for ages, but her mum had been a Ravenclaw), and she was just so very curious how it'd happened. The House separations were getting worse, her Auntie had said, and she really wanted to know if she could _fix _that ...

There was a pause.

_Did you know, _the Hat said, _your father asked me the exact same question?_

_Huh? What d'you -_

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

><p>"Boot, Terry!"<p>

Terry really _wanted _to look dignified and calm, but he was too consumed with curiosity; and so his attempt at a casual walk turned helplessly into a scramble for the battered artifact. It was hundreds and hundreds of years old and so of course he _tried _to be careful with it, but he just _really really wanted to ask it -_

_How old are you, exactly? Who made you? How do you work? Don't you get bored? Were you a real person? How do you make it so that there's such an even number of students in each house? How do you stop people from talking out loud? Wh -_

_Stop, _said the voice of the Hat, and Terry subsided in embarrassment.

_Sorry._

_I am exactly one thousand and sixty-eight years old, I was made by Godric's uncle Jory the Madder Hatter, I work by magic that Rowena never bothered to explain to me, and no, of course I don't get bored, I am a hat. The remaining questions you can find the answers to in the private library in your House, which is of course -_

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

><p>"Brocklehurst, Mandy!"<p>

Mandy had questions, too, but she managed much better at walking calmly and being gentle with the ancient Hat, which she settled very carefully on her head before she began asking them. _Hello, Hat, I was wondering if there's any real connection between House and blood status? Like I know there's never Muggleborns in Slytherin but is that because the Slytherins don't want Muggleborns or because Muggleborns are actually less likely to be Slytherin-y? Or -_

_I do not consider blood status as relevant to my decisions, _said the Hat firmly, _though many of the students do. If you would like to know more on the subject, try consulting the library under the subject 'Historical Muggle Prejudice.' Do you think it is more important to have good friends or to have intelligent friends?_

Mandy did not respond to this question immediately, because she had been so thoroughly thrown off-balance by its abruptness. What an odd thing to ask; wasn't the important thing to have friends at all? But, well, if she had to choose - _I think that's an unfair distinction, _she said, or tried to say, as it didn't actually leave her mouth. _Being intelligent is being good, isn't it? __  
><em>

_Some might disagree with you, _the Hat replied rather wryly, _such as, perhaps, around three-quarters of the school;_ _but those who think similarly will likely join you in -_

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

><p>"Brown, Lavender!"<p>

Lavender was frightened. She'd only found out a few months ago that her father (who had died before she was born) had been a wizard, that the strange things that sometimes happened in their house weren't just "oh, probably ghosts" but Lavender doing accidental magic. Her mother was what was apparently called a _Muggle_, and so had raised her normally ... Oh, it was going to be so hard not to think of magic as _weird. _Even though it _was_ weird, it was impossibly weird, she was literally about to talk to a Hat and have it decide the course of her life -

_Hello, _it said, and Lavender took a deep breath.

_I am not afraid, _she told herself firmly. She'd heard Hermione Granger talking about how Headmaster Dumbledore had been in Gryffindor, and she wanted to be like that. _I can do this._

_Of course you are afraid, _the Hat said, and Lavender winced. How was she supposed to convince it she was good enough to be Gryffindor if it could see her emotions better than she could? She was about to protest when it said, _but that's quite alright._ She paused in confusion, and the Hat explained, _Godric always said, "To be brave is not to be unafraid; it is to face the world when you are afraid."_

_Er, _thought Lavender, _that didn't quite make sense._

_It will, in time. You are, after all, a -_

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

><p>"Bulstrode, Millicent!"<p>

_I'm going to break that Corner boy's nose if he doesn't stop humming, _Millicent was thinking as she stalked up to the stool in the wake of beaming Lavender Brown who had just run off to the Gryffindor table.

As the Hat settled on her head, it said in her mind, _Why? He carries a perfectly good tune. _

_It's annoying. Annoying things should be hurt until they stop being annoying, _she thought with a sort of mental shrug.

_Hmm. I seem to recall that exact phrase being spoken by a certain green-eyed old wizard called Salazar -_

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

><p>"Corner, Michael!"<p>

Michael was humming faintly to himself, drawing annoyed looks from several nervous-looking students in his vicinity and a faint smile from a blonde, rather Nordic girl, who he thought he might recall someone earlier calling 'Lisa.' She had started to hum along - apparently she knew the song - by the time Michael's name was called, and he skipped brightly up to the stool. Ignoring the annoyance of other students in your age-group was an art you had to learn when you kept being smarter than they were.

_Hullo, Hat._

_Ah, you are an interesting one! _the Hat exclaimed. _Full of excitement, not sure if you want to read the entire library or perhaps set fire to it -_

_What! _exclaimed Michael, scandalized. _Why on earth would I -_

_Ah, but you did think of it, _laughed the Hat. _You wondered, you did, when you were told there was a thousand-year-old library, whether your most entertaining route to fame might be to burn the library and see what everyone says! You are not the first to wonder, nor are you the first with the courage to try such a stunt, and I doubt you shall be the first to succeed._ The Hat seemed to be teasing him, as if he were a child who'd suggested it was a good idea to put the fire out with butterbeer, to save water. _But you should be glad; you would regret, I think, the lost knowledge. __  
><em>

_Excuse me, _said Michael, nettled, _I would read the whole thing first, you know!_

_Ah, no more denials, no more "I would never do that"? You are unusually self-aware._

Michael rolled his eyes, under the darkness of the too-large Hat. _I'm not stupid enough to do everything my subconscious suggests would be fun. I'm not gonna lie and say it wouldn't be fun, but it'd also be stupid and I'd regret it! I think about things before I do them, I'm not a Gryffindor.  
><em>

_Oh, aren't you? Well, I suppose you must then belong to -_

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

><p>"Cornfoot, Stephen!"<p>

Stephen wasn't paying attention when the Deputy Headmistress called his name; he was busy wondering about the Hogwarts Express. He lived in Edinburgh, and his father had complained at length during the trip down to London that it would be monumentally easier to simply Floo or even fly to Hogsmeade. And yet everyone was required to get on the train in London and then spend eight hours coming _back _to Scotland.

(Stephen had spent most of the train ride commiserating with Ernie and Zacharias, although Morag had thankfully been elsewhere. Not that Morag wasn't good company, but she was somewhat more vocal than Ernie about her fondness for the Pride of Portree and they'd unexpectedly flattened Stephen's team the Magpies the previous weekend.)

"Cornfoot, Stephen!" repeated Professor McGonagall sharply, and Stephen startled visibly and shuffled apologetically up to the stool. A number of the other first-years were snickering at him - Zacharias was among them, although Ernie (eternally serious) wasn't.

_Um, hello, Hat. _

_Hmm ... interesting. Usually a student too distracted by curiosities is one I must throw at once in Ravenclaw. _

_Usually? _Stephen was nervous to hear that. Was he not smart enough for Ravenclaw? Ernie would never mock him for that, but it would still bother him ...

_That is a misconception, _the Hat told him sternly. _To be Ravenclaw does not indicate intelligence; it indicates that the driving force is curiosity. Still, both you have in abundance; but you also eat and sleep and breathe familial loyalty, friendship, honor. You are more prone to doing the same thing over and over until you're sure you know it, than to run off to absorb new things as quickly as possible. _

After a moment, Stephen thought cautiously, _Er - thank you, I think? Should I be deciding which I think is more important, or - _

_I am only explaining this to you because you are wondering, not because it is a question yet unanswered, _said the Hat. Stephen had the impression it was rolling its eyes at him. _You are not a Ravenclaw, Stephen Cornfoot. You belong in - _

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

><p>"Crabbe, Vincent!"<p>

He already knew the answer, so he was a little surprised when the Hat talked to him instead of just announcing it. Indeed, he might have startled rather visibly, had there not been magic in place to prevent people from doing that.

_It is very interesting, _said the Hat, in tones that reminded Vincent forcibly of the quiet lectures of Theodore's father who had tutored them all when they were young. Before he could ask what was interesting, the Hat continued. _It is very interesting when students come to me already convinced of where they belong, and yet in so doing show themselves fitting for other homes._

_What? _thought Vincent, puzzled. _I'm a Slytherin, aren't I? Why wouldn't I be?_

_You do not have ambition, _the Hat told him calmly, not judging, simply as if it were a statement of fact. _You have been taught from a young age to grasp opportunity, to try to make yourself better at the expense of others - but why?_

Vincent had never had anyone ask him that. Not even old Mr. Nott, who was very fond of _why _questions (_why do we use wands, not staves? why did the goblins rebel in 1612? why do we use livers in most potions instead of spleens?) _and thus had made himself a young Vincent's least favorite person, since he never knew any of the answers. _Um, _he thought. That being better than other people was better than not being better than other people seemed sort of obvious. _  
><em>

_I shall explain, _said the Hat patiently. _You, personally, do not have in you the drive to become great; only the desire to be like your friends. You conceive of yourself as a Slytherin, because everyone else you know is a Slytherin. This sort of group loyalty, dear child, is a defining trait not of Slytherins, but of Hufflepuffs ..._

_No! _Vincent would have cried aloud, had he been able, in sheer panic. His father would disown him, Gregory would never speak to him again, he would be cut off from any advantage he might have gained by association with the Malfoys, it would _ruin his life _to be in Hufflepuff -

_Ah, well, _said the Hat. It sounded almost sad. _Slytherin is a noble house, but you will not be happy there, Vincent Crabbe. In Hufflepuff you could be happy, you know._

_No! _he repeated as firmly as possible.

_You will not be convinced otherwise, will you? And choices are important, Vincent. I hope it shall not haunt you, to think you might have gone somewhere else other than -_

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

><p>"Davis, Tracey!"<p>

Tracey skittered nervously up to the stool and donned the Hat, trying not to look at the Slytherin table. _Not Slytherin, _she thought as soon as she donned the Hat, _I know I'm a Slytherin, I know, Daddy says so, but ... Please, not Slytherin. _She was scared of them, really, that was the reason. She was scared that if she went there they'd find out that her Mum was a Muggleborn, that she had _Muggle cousins _that she actually spoke to occasionally (they weren't half bad, really), and Draco Malfoy would probably have her _crucified _... _  
><em>

Once she had stopped panicking, the Hat addressed her calmly. _Ah, dear child, but you are a Slytherin. Clever and cunning and not all that attached to the rules - oh, come now, don't tell me you don't think it'd be a challenge worth your time. _

Tracy was not stupid enough to try to lie to the Sorting Hat. It _would _be a challenge, keeping her blood status quiet in the den of snakes, but it would be a _fun _challenge, and sure she could run to Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff or (ugh) Gryffindor, but why? She might make friends, but so _easily_, and where was the fun in that?

_Alright, _she said, _alright, you got me. _

_Good girl. If you'd argued I might have had to send you to Gryffindor. Off you go, then, _

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

><p>"Entwhistle, Kevin!"<p>

Kevin was utterly awed by this entire thing, a magic platform and a train ride into Scotland and a giant castle and _gosh, how were those candles floating without anything holding them up?_, but he was at least paying enough attention to hear his name called, and without too much stumbling made it to the stool to put on the (singing!) Hat. He didn't really address it or anything because he wasn't sure how to talk to it and wasn't sure whether it talked at all, and in any case he was busy wondering how the school found magic kids that didn't have magic parents, and how Exploding Snap cards worked (he'd been taught to play on the train, by a blonde girl whose name he did not at all remember), and what kind of genes made up magic, and whether all of the teachers were properly human, and whether dragons were real, and if it was common for hats to sing, and -

(He never did find out what it sounded like to have a telepathic singing Hat talk to you, because it spent about three seconds on his head before making a decision and shouting it for everyone to hear.)

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

><p>"Finch-Fletchley, Justin!"<p>

_Good evening, _thought Justin politely as he put on the Hat. He wasn't totally sure if it would get that, but the girl he'd met on the train, Susan, had said Sorting involved a conversation of some sort (though she hadn't, admittedly, been at all sure what you were meant to be talking _to_, and that chattery Scottish girl, Morag, hadn't known either). So he thought it was worth a shot.

_Good evening to you, too, _said a voice in his head, and he was delighted. The Hat was indeed apparently sentient, and so he trusted it to make a good choice. None of the students yet Sorted had seemed unhappy with theirs, after all. _Good manners and easy smiles - ah, you could be happy anywhere, I think. _Justin had the distinct feeling that the Hat was smiling at him. _But neither heroism nor curiosity nor ambition is truly your driving force; I think you will be happiest in -_

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

><p>"Finnegan, Seamus!"<p>

Seamus was entirely unsure what to expect as he ambled over to the stool and donned the Hat. By now it was becoming obvious that it didn't take the same amount of time to Sort everyone, but he wasn't sure whether taking a long time was supposed to be a _good _thing or not.

He became sure of the answer, however, when the Hat seemed to make an instantaneous decision, and the knowledge was accompanied by a feeling of instantaneous relief. _Full of fire, you are, Godric would like you - _

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

><p>"Goldstein, Anthony!"<p>

Anthony was not all that confused, he thought. He was full of questions, but he'd organized them sensibly, and looked things up in the bookstore when he went there to buy textbooks, and he thought he basically understood what was going on. He was pretty sure he'd need only put on the Hat for a moment and it would tell him that his sensibly-organized brain belonged in Ravenclaw where all the intelligent people were.

Therefore he was extremely surprised when it said thoughtfully, _Hmm, I think you could do well in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, and I shan't bother to list all their qualities, as I know perfectly well that was the first thing you researched. Gryffindor for your inner nature, Hufflepuff for your social nature ... _

_But I'm a Ravenclaw! _protested Anthony in total confusion.

The Hat seemed almost to sigh. _You could do well in Ravenclaw, _it admitted. _You would be welcomed there, as much as Ravenclaws can welcome anything. But in a warmer house, in red or yellow, you would find a comfort that respect alone will not bring you - _

_I'm a Ravenclaw, _repeated Anthony stubbornly. _You're supposed to Sort based on how we are, not what you think we'd like, I'm a Ravenclaw, don't be ridiculous. _

_On the contrary, _the Hat objected, _I Sort based on the students' well-being. It is not with idleness that I tell you that warm happiness comes more easily to Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs than Slytherins and Ravenclaws - but if you would rather coldness and respect, little scholar, I can only respect your choice. Enjoy - _

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

><p>"Goyle, Gregory!"<p>

Draco had to give him a little shove, because Gregory wasn't quite paying attention when his name was called, he was looking at the ceiling, fascinated by the stars he could see through the clouds that apparently weren't real. But then he moved right quick (can't be disappointing the Malfoy, that's never a good idea, father says) and sat on the stool and put on the Hat, and hoped it wouldn't take it as long to send him to the right place as it had Vincent.

(It had taken almost an _entire minute _for Vincent to get Sorted, and if it took him any less, Gregory was going to hold it over his best friend for the rest of his natural life.)

He was quite disappointed.

The Hat somehow conveyed through telepathy or sound a mischievous smirk; and it said, _You could be a Gryffindor, you know, you have the determination in you - _and a minute and a half of the Hat's wheedling, spiked with the knowledge that it was stalling _on purpose, _ruined any hope Gregory had had of teasing Vincent about his Sorting. _  
><em>

(He didn't really need that extra aggravation to hate the House of Godric Gryffindor and his stupid bloody thousand-year-old immature child of a Hat, even if it helped, so when the Hat eventually gave up, its verdict wasn't _really _a surprise.)

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

><p>"Granger, Hermione!"<p>

_I want to be a Gryffindor! _was the first thing she thought, firmly, upon running to the stool in excitement and donning the thousand-year-old artifact which had belonged to the greatest of the Founders, Godric Gryffindor. _Please, please, I want to be a Gryffindor, - _

_Why?_ inquired the Hat, sounding more curious than a Hat that could read her thoughts really ought to have been.

But she forged ahead and explained herself anyway. _Dumbledore's a Gryffindor, I want to be like him, I can be brave, I promise, please - _

_But child, you are so very Ravenclaw, _the Hat objected, sighing. _You drink up knowledge like it is ambrosia, your most basic interaction with other people is to talk about things you've learned. You belong in Ravenclaw, with others of your own kind. Or if you really don't like the idea, you have a number of Hufflepuff traits as well - hard work nearly to a fault - you could belong there, as well, if you preferred. _

Hermione was not the slightest bit happy with this judgment. _I want to be a Gryffindor, _she repeated stubbornly. _Knowledge, books, studying, I want to do well, of course, everyone does - but there's no point in being smart if you can't be brave! _She had to explain, she had to make it understand ... if you went to a House it would magnify those things about you that were most closely aligned to that House's philosophy. Just because she was more Ravenclaw _now _didn't mean that being in Gryffindor wouldn't _make her braver_, and she _wanted _that, more than anything else -

The Hat seemed to sigh. _I did not mean to imply that you are not brave, child, _it said. _Indeed, I can hardly deny it when you have the classically Gryffindor audacity to argue with me. _

Hermione beamed, under the Hat's dark brim. _So send me to Gryffindor then! Please? I promise I'll do your House proud! Cross my heart! _

_You will not be at home there, _it warned. _Gryffindors are not used to having children such as you among them; they will not know what to do with you. You will be lonely, until you learn to be one of them, and that may take you a long time, Ravenclaw girl ... _

_I can do it, _she said stubbornly, _please, I can, I will - _

_On your head be it, little lioness. _

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

><p>"Greengrass, Daphne!"<p>

Daphne walked in measured steps, a sharp contrast to the excited scramble of the bushy-haired Gryffindor girl before her. She had spent her whole childhood learning how to be graceful, how to be a mask of calm, how to look untouchable. _The War is over, _her father had told her, _but there are still some who resent us for our failure to participate. Be careful, dearest. _

She was careful. She held her head high. She settled the Hat over her head and did not betray her anxiety. She was good at pretending to be like her father, but had she really succeeded at _being _like him? (There was very little Daphne wanted, except to do as much good for her House as her father had done, and to do that she figured she needed to be her father.)

_Ah, yes, _said the Hat, sounding amused, _yes, little Greengrass, you are indeed your father in miniature, as you have tried to be. _And just as she had hoped, too, the Hat spent very little time before it sent her to her father's home. _You are the very picture of a young - _

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

><p>"Hopkins, Wayne!"<p>

Wayne was quick to run to the Hat, to escape the irritated gaze of the dark-haired girl next to him, who had been glaring at him ever since she found out he was from Wales and didn't speak Welsh _("How dare you!")_. Honestly, he had no idea why that annoyed her so much, it wasn't like he'd done it on _purpose_. He'd had primary school lessons in English, after all, and she hadn't, and anyway, oughtn't they to be friends?

Everyone ought to be friends.

(He did not talk to the Hat. It just smiled at him.)

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

><p>"Jones, Megan!"<p>

_Hello, _said the Hat, and then, _be nice to your classmate, it is unlike you to be so judgmental. If you can find it in your heart to be nice to nearly everyone else you've ever met, why not one with whom you have much in common? _

_Why would I need to be near him, aren't I a Slytherin? _(She did not at all want to admit that she was already feeling guilty. Wayne had _run _from her when his name was called, as if frightened, and she really _didn't _want to scare people the way her cousin Gwenog did ... )

The Hat sighed. _I suppose you could be successful there, _it admitted. Megan knew that was true; her mother had been telling her all her life she was probably a Slytherin. She was a skilled liar and a weaver of tales, she would have fun trying to trick her Slytherin classmates into doing what she wanted ... Then it added in an almost wheedling tone, _but you would be happier in Hufflepuff, you know ..._

_Oh._ Happiness was important, that was one of the things her dad said all the time, whenever her mother made comments about her Slytherinness. 'Don't let ambition get in the way of happiness.' Her dad was smart, and the Hat was probably pretty smart too, so she supposed she ought to take its advice._ Well - alright._

Belatedly, it occurred to Megan that the Hat was speaking to her in Welsh (how strange), not English, but she didn't have time to inquire, because it had already made its shouted judgment.

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

><p>"Li, Su!"<p>

She could see her cousin Cho waving at her from the Ravenclaw table as she stepped up to the stool and sat, and then let the Hat fall over her eyes. She had really missed Cho, whose mother was Su's father's sister and used to bring her over all the time so that they could do their homework together. Neither of their parents spoke especially good English, and they'd sent the girls to Muggle primary school expressly for the purpose of making sure they were absolutely fluent before they went to Hogwarts; but it had turned out to be a lot of fun. Cho was good at arithmetic and Su was better at spelling, and they'd bonded as children over helping each other, even though Cho was a year older.

She'd come back the previous summer full of enthusiasm for magical classes, especially for Professor Flitwick the Charms professor who was her Head of House, and Su had been just _dying _to learn all the fascinating things Cho had told her about and not been able to demonstrate ...

(Later, she would find friends in Hufflepuff as well, and wonder why she had not thought of going there; and she would suspect that the fact that she was dwelling on homework and Charms class and a relative dressed all in blue explained how quickly the Hat made its judgment.)

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

><p>"Longbottom, Neville!"<p>

Neville was _not_ frightened of a hat.

He kept telling himself that, but somehow that didn't stop his legs wobbling or his palms sweating or his eyes getting all watery or his voice going squeaky when he spoke. So he didn't speak, and he blinked a lot, and he kept his hands in his pockets and held tight to Trevor and tried to pretend he wasn't terrified.

"Longbottom, Neville!"

He almost missed it, and then he realized that was his name, and he jumped and almost tripped as he ran over to the stool and then almost fell again trying to sit down and then he nearly dropped the hat, and by the time Neville had managed to sit and put the Sorting Hat over his head, his face was burning.

_Hello there_, said a voice, and he started.

Neville thought cautiously, _Er, um, hi?_

The sound of laughter rang in his head. _You seem particularly frightened of me. I am just a hat._

_I'm - I'm not scared!_ Neville insisted.

_I can see inside your head, child, do not lie. Points for effort, however._

Neville fidgeted under the Hat's brim. _Okay, alright, I'm scared, but you're NOT just a hat, _he argued. _I mean, whatever you tell me is going to decide basically my entire life and what if my Gran doesn't like it? What if - _

The hat was laughing at him again, and Neville quailed and shut up. _Don't worry,_ it said, and Neville thought a bit mutinously that laughing at someone was an awful way of trying to cheer them up, but it continued. _Some are difficult, some require choices or even arguments - but you?_

_Me? _he gulped.

_You're easy_, said the Hat with what Neville thought might have been properly interpreted as a smile. _You are and will probably always be a true -_

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

><p>"MacDougal, Morag!"<p>

Morag had to wait a moment, for a red-faced Neville Longbottom to run back to the high table, for he had run to the Gryffindor table still wearing the hat. She gave him a measured, distasteful look as he handed her the Sorting Hat, and then settled imperiously upon the stool as if it were her own personal throne, and donned the Hat like a crown.

_Oh, gracious, you are a fascinating one. All full of contradictions, _the Hat observed. _You want a spotlight, you do not care to share, and yet it frightens you deeply that you might not make friends; you yearn for approval and yet do not deign to be concerned with others' opinions; you want to know everything but nothing should be acceptable but that you learn it yourself ... ah, my, you might go anywhere._

_Do I get to pick, then? _inquired Morag, wondering absently why the Hat didn't have an English accent. It sounded just like her father, stern and Scottish, bringing to mind large beards and reddish hair.

_I am speaking in Godric's voice, _the Hat explained, ignoring her stated question in favor of the one she was thinking about. _But since I borrow the student's own intelligence to speak to them, I sound the way they are most comfortable with - indeed, for Megan Jones I believe I was actually speaking in Welsh. And yes, you do get to choose. You do not need someone to tell you what to be, you need to be forced to make a decision you have thus far put off ... how do you want to identify yourself, Morag MacDougal?_

She thought about that. The Hat was right, damnably so; she had been putting off forming a solid impression of herself. She liked to play chameleon, to be a different person for each situation, and that made it easy not to have to think about who she _really _was. But how did she act when all alone? She liked to catalogue things, she had endless notebooks full of carefully written lists ... she liked to argue with people ... she could learn to think of herself as a scholar easily enough, she thought. Did that count as a decision?

_I think I'd like to be a Ravenclaw._

_Yes, that counts as a decision. The first one you've ever made, really. You ought to be proud of yourself._

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

><p>"MacMillan, Ernie!"<p>

_Good evening, Mr. Sorting Hat, _said Ernie politely as he sat, trying to balance the Hat so that he could still see and failing utterly. No one ever managed that, it was simply too big for eleven-year-olds. Godric Gryffindor had been a rather large man. (Ernie tried anyway, and then shrugged and moved on when he failed.)

_Ah, Ernest Ernie, _said the Hat, _brave and steadfast and ever so serious ... and you would like to be Ravenclaw? Why? _

Well, his mother had been a Ravenclaw, and he always felt faintly inadequate whenever she said something he didn't understand, which was most of the time. _I want to be smarter. _

He had absolutely no idea how the Hat was managing to make a disapproving expression at him, since it didn't have a face for him to see. _It is a misconception that all intelligent students are Ravenclaw, _it pointed out. _You are not unintelligent, Ernie Macmillan, do not let your mother tell you otherwise; but you are not a Ravenclaw, and I am not sending you there no matter how much you ask._

Ernie accepted this with aplomb, but he did have to ask, _Why not? _

_Because you would not belong, _said the Hat, _and there is nothing in you that would allow you to adapt, there is no part of you that could make it pleasant. When students argue I will send them where they ask, if they have anything, anything that makes it a sensible choice, but you would be miserable in Ravenclaw. You do not like to argue, you do not like to ask questions for the sake of questions, you do not like to be alone with a book. You are a social creature, you are meant to have friends and to do things with your hands, you are a - _

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

><p>"Malfoy, Draco!"<p>

_Oh. Well, you're easy._

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

><p>"Nott, Theodore!"<p>

Theodore was expecting to be Sorted as quickly as Draco had been.

He was somewhat disappointed.

_Ahh, _said the Hat, _what a fascinating conflict you have. _

_Conflict? _he said, a bit affronted. _I'm a Slytherin, my family's always been, what conflict could there be? _(Or could the Hat see the way he was annoyed sometimes with his father, with the way he expected adulthood from Theo before he had even gone to Hogwarts? He tried, he tried so hard, and it was _never good enough - _)

_You could do well in Ravenclaw, _the Hat said. _Books and quiet and giant windows, and classmates who are not watching your every move to see if you deserve the respect they give you - you could be happy in Ravenclaw, Theodore. _

It was tempting. But his father would be disappointed, and that was important to him, maybe more important than silly abstracts like happiness. Would success not make him happy? ... He was less disappointed when he realized that he could tell his friend (was the Malfoy his friend?) that the Hat had been trying to send him to Ravenclaw _"Because I'm smarter than you, Draco," _and that thought made the decision for him.

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

><p>"Parkinson, Pansy!"<p>

She settled the Hat primly on her head after Theo handed it to her. He had an almost predatory grin on his face, which she suspected she would need to make Daphne explain to her; the social circles of the Noble Houses had all of these complicated rules that she didn't get, but which she really needed to learn to understand, if she was going to marry into one. Which she was going to, of course, because they didn't have money but she and her mother had all kinds of fascinating blackmail to make them do whatever she wanted ...

_Oh, _she heard the Hat say, _you're not complicated, are you ... _

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

><p>"Patil, Padma!"<p>

Padma desperately wished that they didn't have to do this in front of the entire school. As she walked up to the stool, she felt like everyone was _staring _at her, like they had nothing better to do than watch her fidget and hope not to embarrass herself horribly. _Please get this over with quickly, _she thought as she pulled the Hat onto her head, and wasn't totally sure if she was begging the Hat or Vishnu, but she supposed the Hat was likely to hear her either way.

Though she could not see anything but the inside of the Hat and it certainly hadn't made any actual noise, she felt as though she could hear it nodding. (Padma made a mental note to look up magical synaesthesia.) _Ah, my dear, worry not, you are not difficult. You think in questions and would rather go to the library than appreciate the feast. You are the very picture of a -_

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

><p>"Patil, Parvati!"<p>

_I am not my sister, I am not my sister, I am not my sister, _Parvati was thinking as she sat cautiously down on the bench. She loved Padma, of course she did, but - _I don't want to spend all my time reading, I'm not a Ravenclaw, don't you dare send me there just because Padma is!_

That the Hat did not immediately dismiss her was reassuring. That it laughed was less so. _Did you just threaten me? _it inquired.

_I - um -_ Parvati was briefly thrown, and then she rallied. _You're just a hat! I could set you on fire!_

_Good luck, dear, _said the Hat, snorting, _but don't worry, you're not a Ravenclaw. Stupidly courageous little girls who think they can set priceless magical artifacts on fire invariably belong in -_

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

><p>"Perks, Sally-Anne!"<p>

_Oh, they're twins_, thought Sally-Anne in interest as the second of the Patils handed her the Hat and skipped off to Gryffindor, beaming so widely that it ought to have split her head open. _I wish I had a twin. _

_Well, I can give you the next best thing, _said the Hat.

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

><p>"Rivers, Jonathan!"<p>

Jonathan had had a completely different reaction to the observation that two twins had just been Sorted (and into different Houses, no less). He was wondering, as he picked up the Sorting Hat, whether magical twins had any unusual properties, like being able to feel each others' pain and the like. He'd heard stories, of course, but he'd never actually met any, and so he wasn't sure if those stories were based in truth like Babbitty Rabbit (who was obviously an Animagus) or completely crazy like the Three Brothers (who had _met Death,_ yeah, right).

He promptly asked the Hat this.

_I am not a twin and so I wouldn't know,_ said the Hat. Then it suggested, with a rather wry tone to its imaginary voice, _Perhaps you should ask Padma Patil._ _You will be having classes with her. _

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

><p>"Roper, Sophia!"<p>

_I wish everyone hadn't laughed at that Longbottom kid, it's not like this isn't terrifying, I don't blame him at all. Do you know how to make people stop doing that, Hat? _

It laughed. _I am only a Hat, and cannot force people to become different, _the Sorting Hat said. _I can only tell you what I know from reading countless minds, which is that people laugh at their peers because it does not occur to them that the same thing could happen to them. Not everyone has your empathy, dear child. But you will find those who do in - _

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

><p>"Runcorn, Allison!"<p>

_Daddy says I'm gonna be the best witch in my year, he'd better be right -_

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

><p>"Smith, Zacharias!"<p>

Zacharias was practically radiating confidence by the time he sat; and it wasn't a confidence misplaced.

_Ah, ah, a Smith, you have been taught as well as any of your family - no question what to do with you, you're a -_

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

* * *

><p>"Thomas, Dean!"<p>

Thomas was starting to feel extremely nervous by the time his turn came around. He'd already felt like he stuck out, what with being the tallest first-year in the group, and having the group disappear around him did not make him feel less like everyone must be staring at him. Most of these kids were totally used to all this, he supposed, but he was still stuck on "I'm a _what? _I can do_ what?_" to feel like he was properly equipped to handle any of this.

He also didn't feel like he belonged in any of those Houses the Hat had sung about. He didn't think he had daring and nerve, or patience, or wit or cunning, or any of those things, he was just Dean. What if it said he didn't belong here? His mum had been so _excited, _so _proud_ ... what would she say if he was sent home in disgrace because he wasn't really a proper wizard?

By the time his name was called he'd worked himself into quite a state of nervousness, but the Hat spent only a very brief period of time on his head. _Not all bravery looks the same, _it said, _but you will find yours in time, I think. __  
><em>

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

><p>"Turpin, Lisa!"<p>

The boy who'd been humming, Michael Corner, had been sitting at the Ravenclaw table for most of the Sorting now, and there were only two people left besides Lisa, but she'd kept on with the same song. It was a good idea, she thought; music was a useful distraction. No wonder the sailors at the port were always singing when they had nothing better to do.

As she put on the Hat, it occurred to her that this explained why the Sorting Hat sang a song every year. _That's how you entertain yourself between Sortings, isn't it? _she inquired curiously, pretty sure she was right but inclined to be sure. _Making up the songs. What a great idea! _

_Thank you, _said the Hat, seeming to smile, _though it wasn't my idea, I think Helga spelled it into me, she loved to sing. An astute deduction nevertheless, and it certainly supports the theory that you belong in - _

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

><p>"Weasley, Ronald!"<p>

_I'm a Gryffindor, right? _was his first thought, a worried thought.

The Hat laughed at him.

_Yet another Weasley? Ah, dear boy, you go where you belong, not where your family decides. _Then at his rush of terrified horror, it chuckled again. _Just making a point. There is bravery in you, boy, do not doubt it. But are you sure? You could do well in Slytherin, you know. They would not reject you; you are of purer wizarding blood than many that call Salazar's house home -_

_No! _gasped Ron. _No no no, absolutely not, no way._

_Why not? _inquired the Hat innocently. _What better way to escape the wide shadows of your brothers, than to go where those shadows do not fall? In Slytherin, you could be the greatest of your family ..._

He thought about it for a moment. Though he would never admit it to his brothers, he really, truly thought about it. People were always telling Percy he ought to be a Slytherin, but he _wasn't ... _in Gryffindor Ron would just be, as the Hat had said laughingly, just another Weasley. In Slytherin no one would expect him to be like his brothers. But - _think of what Mum would say -_

Ron shook his head stubbornly under the Hat. _No._

The Hat seemed to sigh. _Ah, well, _it said, _if you're sure, then, off you go to - __  
><em>

"GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

><p>"Zabini, Blaise!"<p>

Blaise had been counting. He'd guessed he'd be last; names beginning with Z weren't exactly common in the Isles. And he'd counted exactly ten Hufflepuffs, ten Ravenclaws, nine Slytherins, and only seven Gryffindors, including the Weasley who'd just been Sorted. For this to be a reasonably _fair _distribution, he would have to be a Gryffindor. Ha. Not bloody likely.

He explained his alternative suggestion to the Hat as he settled calmly with it on his head. _More Gryffindor types died in the war than any other, _he pointed out. _If it hadn't been for that, there'd probably be plenty more of the idiots - say a Potter and a McKinnon and a Prewett, more than likely, I've done my homework - so obviously the only real hole is that tenth spot in Slytherin, eh? _Had he been allowed to move, he would have spread his arms in artful helplessness. _And who am I to argue with statistics?_

_A Ravenclaw, perhaps? _suggested the Hat, sounding amused.

_And consort with an entire house full of know-it-alls like that annoying Scottish swot Morag, and clueless Mudbloods besides? No, thank you._

The Hat seemed almost to smile mischievously. Y_ou are not __really a blood purist,_ it said, a statement of fact that he didn't bother to deny to a mind-reading Hat. It was right, he'd only said that out of acquired habit, an insult he wore like a shield. _You pretend because it suits you to have Draco Malfoy and Theodore Nott consider you an acceptable associate. You want to wear green because they are already there, because your cousin Daphne is looking at you right now wondering why it is taking so long ..._

_So why don't you just send me there, then? _complained Blaise in frustration. _I have plenty of good reasons -_

_You have a great many bad reasons, _corrected the Hat. _We are talking about this because you are not a cut-and-dry case. You might be successful in Slytherin, yes, you would have wealthy companions and amusing enemies, you need not try very hard to earn social and material wealth ... but you would not be happy. Not you, whose closest friend is a cousin with whom you share little but blood and a mutual annoyance with your parents. You would be happier in Ravenclaw, you know, or better yet, Hufflepuff._

He thought about that, for a couple of moments. He considered accepting this suggestion.

And then he rejected it. _I would be bored in Hufflepuff. That's not happiness. __  
><em>

_If you say so, little viper._

"SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

><p>And with that, the Sorting was concluded, and the Feast begun.<p> 


	11. Learning To Fly

"Now hold your hand over the broom, and say 'UP!'," Madam Hooch instructed.

Neville did exactly that, but it just rolled over on the ground unhelpfully. He looked around nervously and found with relief that many people were having the same problem. Malfoy, of course, had his broom in hand and looked terribly smug; Ron, too, didn't seem to have had any trouble. The actual task achieved, the two of them now seemed to be having some sort of contest revolving around who could be more insulting without actually saying any words. Neville was rather impressed; they were rapidly approaching Gran-levels of disdainfulness. Hermione, to his left, was glaring sternly at her broom, which hadn't moved. Odd; Hermione was usually good at everything.

(Neville continued to have no idea how anyone genuinely believed Muggleborns were inherently inferior; given the lack of Muggleborns in Slytherin, he was starting to suspect that most of the blood purists had actually just never met any.)

"Up?" Neville repeated hesitantly, and nothing happened at all. He looked at the redhead next to him, who was paying him exactly zero attention, and tugged on his sleeve. "Ron, why isn't this working?"

Ron interrupted his glaring match with Malfoy to turn and look at him, startled. "Huh? Oh, uh, you've gotta, I dunno, say it like you mean it?" he offered vaguely, looking puzzled.

"I mean it just fine!" Hermione interjected, arms crossed in frustration.

At this, Ron looked downright delighted. After several weeks of being relentlessly upstaged by the bushy-haired brightest-witch-of-their-age, actually winning at something was clearly the highlight of his current existence. "What, you can't do it? Wow, something I'm actually better at than you?" He grinned. "Never thought it'd happen, did you?"

"You've also got chess," said Dean helpfully, as Hermione flushed red with annoyance and turned away again.

"Shut up and help us," added Seamus.

Then, for the first time, Ron noticed he'd been the only Gryffindor to succeed yet. "Oh," he said in mild surprise, glancing around. He tried again to explain. "Er - well - I think brooms can tell if you're scared of them, right? You have to, I dunno, really want to fly. That's what Charlie said."

"Who's Charlie?" asked Dean curiously, while Hermione frowned at her broom and informed it sternly that she wanted very much to fly. This did not have any marked effect on the stubbornly grounded vehicle, and she gritted her teeth and visibly stopped herself from demanding more answers from Ron. Lavender and Parvati giggled at her.

Meanwhile, Seamus explained, "Charlie's his brother," having already acquired this information through social osmosis. "Lee Jordan said he was one of the greatest Seekers Gryffindor ever - "

"Yeah," interrupted Ron, who looked a bit like he didn't really want to hear more about how awesome his brother was. Neville, who frequently felt inadequate in the face of people telling stories about his parents, could rather sympathize. Ron said hastily, "Anyway, go on, try it."

Eventually, with Ron's vague and amused but reasonably helpful encouragement, all the Gryffindors had managed to summon brooms into their hands, even Hermione, who Neville suspected had been listening even though she was pretending to ignore Ron. Neville, although he'd tried to convince himself (and his broom) otherwise, was already feeling a creeping sense of doom. _I'm going to fall, he was thinking, _feeling sick to his stomach_, I'm going to fall and everyone's going to laugh -_

"Mount your brooms!" barked Madam Hooch, and he did, and he tried not to let on that his entire body was shaking. _I'm going to fall, I'm going to fall, I'm going to hurt myself and everyone will laugh and tell me how useless I am and Gran will be horribly disappointed -_

He was hardly listening as the instructor corrected various people, but when she reached him he jumped almost guiltily when she spoke. "Both hands on the broom, Longbottom," she told him, "no, here, one above the other so you have proper leverage." It took her barely two minutes to fix him, but to Neville it felt like an eternity during which everyone was staring at him. At least Ron was the only Gryffindor who laughed. Eventually, finally, she moved on to the rest, and Neville tried very hard not to move so that he wouldn't be wrong again.

"Now, on the count of three, kick off from the ground and rise, slowly, to about twenty feet, and then come back down," Madam Hooch instructed loudly, and then repeated this twice more until she was sure everyone had heard. Neville thought his heart must be beating so loudly that everyone could hear it.

"One - "

_Merlin, I'm going to fall -_

"Two -

_I'm going to die -_

"Three!"

He kicked off and started rising, quickly, too quickly, out of the group of broomsticks, and he wanted to stop but the broom kept going. Neville gave a horrified squeak and clung to the broomstick, begging it to sink. It ignored his wishes.

"Come back, boy!" shouted Madam Hooch.

"I'm tryyiiiing," he gasped, his voice sounding terribly squeaky and tearful. And then there was a terrible lurching in his stomach and nothing was holding him up anymore, and then sharp pain as he hit the ground.

* * *

><p>"Hey, look, it's Longbottom's stupid toy - "<p>

Ron was arguing the merits of the Chudley Cannons to Seamus, who was a diehard Kenmare Kestrals fan, while Parvati spoke sharply at Pansy Parkinson (with whom, Lavender explained quietly to Dean, she had been friends until they were Sorted into opposing Houses). All Gryffindor conversation paused when the sound of Draco Malfoy's drawl cut through the air. The smug blond Slytherin was tossing Neville's Remembrall up and down in his hand, looking delighted. "Oy!" said Ron angrily, "you give that back!"

"Hmmm," said Draco in mock thoughtfulness, "no, I don't think I will." Then, as an idea occurred to him, his whole face lit up with malice, and he picked up his broomstick. "Come and get it, Weasel!" he laughed mockingly as he shot into the air. The Gryffindors all looked at each other nervously; Malfoy might be a smug little snot, but he _was _a good flyer.

It took Ron about three seconds of fuming before he picked up his own broom and mounted it. "Ron, _no_!" hissed Hermione, sounding absolutely scandalized. "Weren't you listening, you could get _expelled_- "

"Oh, hush," said Seamus dismissively, waving a hand, "he won't really," as Ron leapt into the air snarling.

"But - " began Hermione, still alarmed, "but Professor Hooch said - "

Parvati gave Hermione a rather extraordinarily condescending look. "Honestly," she said, rolling her eyes, "for a know-it-all, you really don't know anything." Then she was distracted, as Lavender tugged excitedly on her sleeve and pointed up at the sky, and consequently she missed Hermione's hurt expression entirely. (Hermione did not try again to intervene.) Meanwhile, Parvati's jaw dropped as she followed her friend's line of sight.

"Blimey," said Dean, in a tone which suggested he wasn't totally sure whether he should be concerned or deeply impressed. Ron and Malfoy's argument seemed to have devolved quite quickly into an attempt to wrestle each other off of their brooms, and they were descending rather rapidly out of the sky. Ron had got Malfoy into a headlock and was trying to get at the hand holding the Remembrall, but was failing to prevent the Slytherin from elbowing him repeatedly in the ribcage. As they descended back into earshot, the sounds of yelping reached the students on the ground.

"Oh, _honestly_," said Tracey disdainfully, frowning at the brawl. Daphne nudged her with an elbow, making a warning face that said _don't look at the Malfoy like that_; failing to pretend Draco Malfoy was perfect could get you in a lot of trouble, in Slytherin.

But perfect he was not; shortly the two boys were rolling around on the ground punching each other, and everyone else was exchanging nervous glances and trying to decide whether to intervene. The Slytherins seemed to think Malfoy might hex them if they interfered, and the Gryffindors had noticed that they were outnumbered nine to six even if they counted Hermione, who was unlikely to participate in a fight. Seamus and Dean had just barely decided they were going to try to help Ron when a voice cut through everyone's deliberations like a knife.

"_Mr. Weasley! Mr. Malfoy! Stop that at once!_"

It was McGonagall.

The two brawling first-years separated themselves in a sheepish hurry. Both were covered in rapidly blooming bruises and dirt, Malfoy's nose was bloody, and Ron had blood tricking slowly down his cheek from a cut across his forehead. Malfoy said, "Weasley started i - " and Ron interrupted him angrily to object "No I di - ", and then they were both abruptly silenced by a glare from the formidable Transfiguration professor.

"Silence, the both of you," she said darkly, "and come with me."

Meekly, the two boys followed, shooting each other furious glares; but Ron had gone only about two steps before he paused, and turned, and threw the Remembrall towards the group of Gryffindors, causing a flurry of shocked sounds from the Slytherins who hadn't realized he'd got it away from Malfoy. Then Ron resumed following McGonagall, grinning victoriously. In a flurry of flailing and yelping, Seamus and Dean managed between them to get hold of the Remembrall before it hit the ground, and resolved not to mention to Ron or Neville that they'd nearly dropped it.

(Later, they heard that Ron and Malfoy had gotten a month's detention and each lost twenty points, but as Ron had broken Draco Malfoy's nose and returned Neville's Remembrall unbroken, he called it a success, and remained in a rather good mood for weeks.)


	12. Wait, You Were Serious?

"Perce, you coming?"

Percy looked up from his Potions book to see Oliver Wood grinning at him, broomstick in hand. The twins were already clattering down the portrait hole, having an obscene amount of energy as usual. Percy raised his eyebrows at them. What on Earth would possess him to go watch his little brothers swing bats around while Oliver yelled at people? He had work to do. He showed up for games (he couldn't not, every one of his brothers had been on the team thus far), wasn't that enough? "Um, why would I?" he asked in confusion, "I'm studying."

His roommate, however, was looking at him like he was crazy. This was not an especially unfamiliar occurrence, but usually it accompanied somewhat understandable concerns, like _what do you mean, you don't care who wins the League?, _or _How have you not heard about the new Cleansweep? _or whatever. Things that Quidditch fans usually cared about. Percy had not thus far found any evidence which suggested that Quidditch fans wanted an audience for their practices, and he had no idea why they were having this conversation. Thankfully, Oliver enlightened him after a moment of them exchanging baffled looks. "I asked you if you'd play Seeker and you said sure," the captain said, starting to sound slightly disappointed.

Percy sighed. Technically, this was true. Charlie had left school two years early, chasing dragons, and Oliver had been scrambling to find a competent replacement ever since. Last year, after his most recent conscript had somehow managed to knock himself out with his own broomstick, Oliver had suggested that Percy, who after all was related to Charlie, try. The other Weasleys were all good flyers; Bill had played Keeper, in his time at the school. But, well. "Oliver, when I said 'sure,' I was being _sarcastic_," Percy explained patiently. "I have no _actual_ desire to waste my time on your field when I have OWLs to study for."

"Oy!" yelled the twins from the portrait hole, looking dramatically scandalized by the suggestion that Quidditch was a waste of time. Fred said, "We don't want you anyway!", and George added, "Good riddance!" with an almost stylized pompous air. It was probably a mockery of Percy himself, who apparently was the only member of his family capable of a reasonable level of responsible seriousness, but frankly Percy was completely okay with mostly-affectionate mockery if it would get him out of Quidditch. So he just nodded agreeably.

"See?" he said reasonably, pointing his quill at Fred and George. "You've been outvoted." He went back to his work, assuming the argument was over. Nobody in their right mind would actually want him to play Quidditch, after all. The very idea was preposterous, and he was glad Fred and George agreed. It was nice to see his brothers demonstrating rudimentary sensibility for once.

Distracted again by his Arithmancy homework, which was trying to run away across the page, Percy was nearly halfway to the portrait hole before he realized he was being dragged.

He yelped and jumped out of the moving chair. Angelina and Alicia promptly grabbed him by the arms, and he stumbled in confusion, his motion arrested, and failed utterly to escape. "Wait, no, hang on - " he began, alarmed. Surely they weren't serious? That would be insane? Wait, Gryffindors _were _all insane, weren't they...

Angelina seized the book he was holding, folded up his work neatly to use it as a bookmark (well, at least that would keep the charts from uncharting while they were gone, Percy thought with a mental sigh), and tossed it to Ron. "Give this to your brother later," Angelina said brightly, completely ignoring Percy's whine of dismay at the cavalier throwing of books. "He'll want it back when we're done with him." Ron, nodding, set the book on the table next to the Exploding Snap cards, grinning. Like all little brothers, the little git was enjoying watching Percy's dramatic loss in this argument. So, evidently, were the twins, who were giggling from outside the portrait hole as they held it open.

Percy tried to object again, though he was starting to sense it wasn't going to do him any good. "This is ridiculous," he said, "I am terrible at Quidditch - "

"Come on, Perce!" said Oliver cheerfully, overriding his objections. He'd just returned from the dormitories, carrying Percy's broomstick, which Percy was fairly certain he had not actually touched since the summer after his second year. Percy tried to back away, and failed; instead Angelina and Alicia ducked under his arms and lifted him off his feet. Percy was firmly of the opinion that this could not possibly end well, but he apparently didn't have a say in the matter. The girls, snickering, carried him bodily from the room.

As the door shut, most of the common room heard Percy's fading yell:

"_Dammit, Oliver!_"


	13. Percy Plays Quidditch

"Oliver, this is a _terrible idea_," Percy repeated for the billionth time as the twins finished forcing him into Gryffindor robes. Despite several weeks of practices (during which he had, as far as he could tell, failed miserably), they had for some reason not given up on the idea that he ought to play Seeker. He really _wasn't _very good at this. Certainly nothing compared to Charlie had been. "Why _me_?" he asked in despair.

"You're slightly better than our other options," replied Fred cheerfully, because Oliver, the target of this question, was studiously ignoring him. George added, somewhat seriously, "C'mon, Perce, at least do us a favor and try?"

Percy sighed and picked up his broom. Fred did have a point, to his annoyance. Oliver had, reluctantly, held tryouts a few weeks ago (although Percy had refused to participate), and apparently they'd _actually_ failed to find an adequate replacement. Considering the low standard of "capable of flying a broomstick without crashing into anything", Percy had been absolutely, completely shocked. So shocked, in fact, that he'd agreed to do it, a decision that he was currently very much regretting. _Surely _there was a better option. Like, they could get Katie to do it, maybe, she was a better flier than he was, and littler, that was supposed to be a good thing for Seekers, wasn't it?...

"Good man," said George brightly, clearly unaware that this was all going to go horribly wrong. "Let's do this."

Lee Jordan, as usual, had got hold of the microphone. He'd been doing this since the first game of his first year, and Percy genuinely had no idea how that had happened. "Alright everybody, it's our first game of the year, Gryffindor versus Slytherin!" he yelled, clearly unaware that the point of microphones is to prevent you from having to yell. "We've all been wondering who Oliver Wood would get for a Seeker this year, and today he's fielding Gryffindor prefect Percy Weasley! After a few years of trying to replace Charlie Weasley, it looks like he's banking on genetics!"

Right, because that was totally a sensible way to pick Quidditch players, thought Percy, squashing the little voice in his head that said _but the rest of your family is good at this game, you know_. "This is a bad idea," sighed Percy aloud, again, as they mounted their brooms. He glanced into the stands longingly, thinking that watching a Quidditch game sounded _dramatically_ more desirable as an afternoon activity when compared to playing in one. Then he wondered if if Penelope was there. He half-hoped she was and half really hoped she wasn't, because he was probably going down in flames. She probably _would _show up for the Ravenclaw/Gryffindor game, but as that one came last, he was holding out hope that Oliver would find someone better by then, and Percy could go back to studying in peace.

The captains shook over the grounded Quaffle; as usual, Oliver and Marcus Flint were doing their level best to break each others' hands.

Then, at the sound of a piercing whistle that made Percy wince, they were in the air, and Percy did not have time to wonder whether injuring your opposite number before the game started was technically a foul. He was instead occupied with just trying very hard not to get in the Chasers' way. Only vaguely was he aware of Lee yelling about how Angelina had the Quaffle. That was ... presumably good. He understood the _rules _of Quidditch, but less so the tactics, and had never been totally clear on the strategical problem of possession and Bludger attraction (apparently, the Bludgers unguided would preferentially attack the player with the Quaffle), because there were a bunch of complicated guidelines about whether or not it was good, in any given situation, to actually - Wait, he'd been told not to worry about that. He had a job, or something.

With any luck he'd only have to do it once, but he might as well try while he was up here.

Where was the other Seeker? Something Higgins, Percy thought his name might be, a seventh-year Slytherin. Oliver had told him that the Slytherin Seeker was really good, and that his best choice would be to mark him and try to stall him in hopes that Gryffindor could pull a significant point lead. Which meant he basically had to try very hard be an annoyance ... and that, of course, meant flinging himself headlong into the way of speeding broomsticks. As opposed to doing the _sensible _thing and simply staying out of everyone's way, which would have been his natural inclination.

This was going to be a really long day, Percy thought to himself with yet another long-suffering sigh, and accelerated.


	14. She's A Nightmare, Honestly

The entirety of Gryffindor House was in a bit of a sulk, and Neville wasn't really sure why. Percy had, after all, done (he thought) quite a good job at the Quidditch match. The Slytherin Seeker had gone after the Snitch several times and been interrupted by Percy cutting him off or otherwise impeding him until it disappeared. It had added a lot of time to the game, during which Angelina and Katie and Alicia had added more points to the scoreboard, and Oliver had mostly prevented Slytherin from doing the same. Gryffindor had been eighty points up when Terence Higgs had finally dodged an unhappy-looking Percy and caught the Snitch. Which wasn't awful at all, they'd only lost by seventy.

Having the general impression that the Quidditch season was about marginal score - a single loss wasn't at all the end of the world - this somewhat confused him. After all, Quidditch matches (according to Ron) were routinely won by point margins in the hundreds. But for some unclear reason, everyone was acting like it was the worst thing in the world. Even Ron, with whom he had _had _an entire somewhat baffling and rather one-sided conversation about marginal score and the likelihood of winning the Cup, seemed annoyed about it! And meanwhile, Percy Weasley who had actually _participated _in the loss of the game, more than everyone else in the Cup really, had just been sitting in a corner with a big stack of books, aggressively not caring.

Neville thought sometimes that he really didn't understand people.

Still, he soon forgot about it entirely. On Halloween they were going to do a real charm in Charms class. This was an event that Neville had been, for some time, both looking forward to and dreading. He'd been doing half-decently at the stuff on paper, because when all the words were down on a page he couldn't mess them up by waving his wand left instead of right or whatever (which happened to him nigh-_constantly_ in Transfiguration). But as soon as they started doing real actual Charms work, he suspected that - no matter how simple and exciting it was - he would screw up somehow.

He felt sadly vindicated in his self-deprecatory prediction, once he'd managed to set fire to a feather in his attempt to cast a Levitation Charm. At least he was with Seamus, who had exactly the same problem. They went through three feathers before anyone else so much as dropped theirs, although Zacharias Smith - across the room - did manage to snap his in half quite soon after the third feather burned scorch marks into Neville and Seamus' table. Ron, who also couldn't do it properly, had gotten stuck with Hermione, who had done the Charm perfectly on her first try. When Neville, waiting for a new (fireproofed) feather, glanced over, she was lecturing the irritated redhead on his pronunciation.

Ron left Charms fuming. "She's a nightmare, honestly," he grumbled to Neville, shaking his head. "It's no wonder she hasn't got any friends." Lavender giggled, and Ron grinned at her.

The girl who had no friends did not show up for dinner, and eventually Neville became confused and worried enough to overcome his fear of speaking, and inquire. But when Neville asked hesitantly where Hermione had gone, to his alarm, Parvati gave him and Ron an extremely dirty look. "She's crying in the bathroom, because _he_ was being _rude_," she informed them, frowning at Ron. Apparently, Parvati did not hold with people being rude, even to someone that she insulted and mocked on a daily basis. Neville, unfortunately, was not yet familiar with the word _hypocrisy,_ and in any case was distracted by the fact that he'd apparently offended Parvati's sensibilities just by being in the vicinity of Ron. He still wasn't used to that, though it happened to him a lot, really.

Ron scoffed at Parvati's glare, however. "She deserves it for being such a swot," he said, skewering a potato dismissively.

"Yes, well, that's not the point," said Parvati, dismissing the question of whether Hermione deserved mockery as so obvious as to not be worth discussing. Evidently, Neville had been wrong, as usual. The young witch explained, looking affronted on behalf of her House or possibly Ron's family name, "The _point _is that it's not an excuse for being so _undignified _- "

As this discussion devolved rather rapidly into a heated argument about the proper level of politeness for telling people how awful they are, Neville tuned out. Instead he opted for nudging his carrots around quietly and wondering if they would really make him smarter. Maybe then he would understand why this conversation was taking place. He never did figure it out, though, because At that particular moment the great hall doors swung wide, and Professor Quirrell came running down the center aisle to face the head table, panting and stammering.

"T-t-t-troll!" he cried, "Troll in th-th-the d-dungeons!" As the whole head table stood up almost as one, the Defense Professor, coming to a gasping stop, looked up at Professor Dumbledore and said faintly, "Thought - thought you ought to know," and then collapsed to the floor.

There was an instant and very loud panic, followed very shortly afterwards by instant silence when Dumbledore began producing fireworks and thunderclaps from his wand. "Prefects, please escort your students back to the dormitories," he said with great calmness, his voice echoing in the ringing quiet. "We will finish the feast in our common rooms."

Stunned and terrified, Neville stuck closely to Ron as they followed Percy through the throng of confusion, all thoughts of Ron and Parvati's argument forgotten by all present. A _troll_? Trolls were horribly dangerous, weren't they? And of course it must be, if the Professor of _Defense Against the Dark Arts _had been so frightened by it. Parvati and Lavender were clinging closely to one another, and Seamus and Dean were awkwardly leaning on each other with expressions that approximately indicated "we are obviously too cool to hold hands (_aaaaahhh)_", which would have been funny if everyone else wasn't also rather frightened.

Only once the Gryffindors had all made it to the common room and Percy started calling roll did Neville abruptly realize, with a horrified sense of shock that made the room shift under him, what they had forgotten along with the propriety argument.

Lavender and Parvati appeared to be realizing, too, as Percy's droning voice reached the G's.

"Gifford!"

"Here!"

"Granger!"

Silence.

Percy blinked.

"Granger, Hermione?" he said again, sounding a little annoyed at having to repeat himself.

"She's not here," squeaked Lavender in a horrified voice, into the silence. "She wasn't at dinner, she was - she was in the girls' washroom - " (Ron's jaw had dropped, and he was looking at Neville in dawning horror.)

Percy, at this news, was dumbfounded. A few seconds passed as everyone looked at each other in alarm. "Right," Percy said shakily, and then again, "right," and he seized Oliver Wood by the arm, apparently because Oliver simply happened to be the person standing nearest to him. "Oliver, keep taking roll," he said firmly, and shoved the parchment and quill into his hand, and bolted out the door without further ado, leaving a rising tide of confused murmuring in his wake.

The Quidditch captain looked slightly alarmed. "Er," he said, scanning the list to find where Percy had left off. "Er, Hooper," and across the room a voice said a bit nervously, "Here!" The other prefects were giving him vaguely sympathetic looks, but no one looked particularly eager to volunteer, so Oliver kept calling names from there. It was not a pleasant process; he kept losing his place as he glanced nervously at the portrait hole, through which his roommate had so abruptly left.

_Percy, what are you doing__?_


	15. Gryffindoring

The thing was, Percy Weasley did not like emergencies.

Exciting events, sure, because they gave him a chance to be authoritative and prove he could keep order, without actually being in any danger. Particularly not danger of failure. He'd been delighted when McGonagall handed him the classlist, because it meant she thought he was the most responsible of the six Gryffindor prefects, even though he was the youngest.

This was exciting, and that was alright with him. He knew how to handle that, more or less. He ran down the stairs as fast as he could, down corridors, across the school, wishing he knew the castle half as well as Fred and George did. He was headed for the dungeons to let McGonagall know that they were a student short so that they could go find her. That was the proper thing to do. She would give him that sort of thin half-smile, the one that Gryffindors were always astonished to find their stern Head of House was capable of, and tell him he had done a good job. He could almost see it already. _Thank you, Mr. Weasley. We will take it from here. _

He was nearly to the dungeons when he heard a high-pitched scream, and he groaned out loud.

Now it was an emergency.

Percy did _not like_ emergencies.

He nearly skidded into a wall as he changed course. Of course he ought to go tell McGonagall, but what kind of prefect would he be if he left the poor girl alone?

He smelled the troll before he saw it, and then there it was, having broken down the door of the girls' washroom, lumbering with its club, and swinging at a trembling first-year girl who was buried under splintered wood and pipes.

There was blood.

Percy said something very impolite that he would in other circumstances have reprimanded any of his siblings for saying within earshot of a first-year. Then, he did something which was impossibly brave and which he would later decide had been impossibly stupid: he ran into the room and placed himself squarely between the troll and the girl. She was crying and bleeding and definitely had some broken bones and clearly would not survive a second hit from that club, and even later when he thought about it, he didn't think he could possibly have done anything else, stupid as it had been. You don't abandon frightened eleven-year-old girls to trolls, you just - you just don't.

But it was still spectacularly, magnificently stupid.

The reason it was stupid was this: he didn't actually have a plan. This occurred to him about a second after he'd run into the room, and so as the club bore down on him he just pointed his wand in the general direction of the troll and said the first thing that came to mind, the Vanishing spell he'd started learning in McGonagall's class just a few weeks before. "Evanesco!" he said desperately, and to his surprise (and the troll's confusion) the club vanished.

Oh.

The troll stared at him dumbly as he stood there in front of the bushy-haired first-year, trying not to panic, and wishing he had a plan so that he'd know what to do next. Heroic stories of the rescue of maidens from monsters were not particularly enlightening on the subject of what you were supposed to do if you _didn't _have a magic sword or know a special troll-banishing spell. "Granger, we should really run," he said, his voice strained.

"I c-c-can't," she sobbed, "m-my leg's b-b-broken," and of course it was, that had been a completely stupid thing of him to suggest.

"Right," he said blankly. Could he carry her? Probably not - Bill or Charlie probably could, but he wasn't actually all that strong. He could try to levitate her, but that would be _slow ... _"Um..."

And then the troll, having stared at its empty fist for awhile, seemed to realize that it didn't actually need a club. As it reared back, roaring, Percy raised his wand and drew a blank. Then, for a long moment, all he could think as the fist flew towards him was _oh god, oh god, I am a failure, she is going to die -_

_-_ and Percy's vision went black.

* * *

><p>Some indeterminate time later, faces swam into view above his head, and he slowly realized that he was lying in a bed. Not his own bed, so by process of elimination he was probably in the hospital wing. He was, surprisingly, not in any particular pain; magic healing was remarkable that way. Oliver Wood was sitting beside him, looking rather anxious. Percy wondered vaguely if this was because he was his only roommate, or because he was his only even-halfway-competent Seeker. Oliver did not provide any enlightenment on the subject, however, just cried "<em>Percy!<em>" when he saw his open eyes. "You're alright!"

"Um," said Percy blankly, "yes, I suppose I am." He really hadn't been _expecting _to find himself alright, to be entirely honest. And that wasn't exactly his main concern. He was scanning the hospital wing and finding, to his burgeoning concern, that they were the _only people there_. "Oliver," he said, his voice strained, "where's Granger?"

Oliver's enthusiasm vanished instantly. "She's gone," he said, and Percy knew the horror must have shown on his face (_oh god I am a failure as a prefect__)_ because Oliver almost instantly qualified his statement, looking panicked. "Oh, Merlin, Perce, breathe, she's not _dead_, she's gone _home_."

Percy gaped, and breathed deeply, and attempted to understand this. "She's - what?"

"You missed it, you were still asleep," explained Oliver, waving his hands vaguely. "Apparently McGonagall found you - she was in a right state when she told me. I came up here straightaway, of course." Percy was mildly surprised at how reassuring it was to know that someone in the world other than his mother cared about his well-being. He really ought to appreciate his friend more. Oliver continued, " ... so I was here when Granger's parents showed up. McGonagall had to call them of course, she was really hurt, they were talking about taking her to St. Mungo's for awhile!" Oh, wow. Percy was pretty sure the last time someone had had to go to St. Mungo's from the Hogwarts infirmary was sometime in the 1970s. Oliver was saying "- and there was this great row - "

Percy was starting to get a bad feeling about this. "About what?"

Oliver looked a bit uncomfortable. "Well," he said, "her parents said they thought Hogwarts was unsafe for children, and McGonagall and Dumbledore kept trying to reason with them, but they said they'd rather - rather she be safe than that she learn magic - "

"They _made her withdraw_?" gasped Percy, utterly horrified by the prospect. He had heard of people being expelled, of course, and it was his greatest nightmare, but to have your _own parents _decide that you weren't allowed to attend Hogwarts anymore?

Oliver nodded. He clearly felt the same way. "They're Muggles," he explained rather sadly, "they don't get it, you know?" His own parents were Muggles, and so he seemed to understand, eve if he didn't like it. It was a mystery to Percy - he couldn't _imagine_ his parents withdrawing him - but then he supposed Oliver would know better than he would. "But," Oliver continued, and smiled in a sort of reassuring way, "on the bright side, Perce, you're a bloody hero. McGonagall says you saved her life, you got a hundred points! Snape was _livid_." He grinned at the memory. "Nobody's going to dare say _you're _not a Gryffindor anymore!"

A day ago, Percy would have been delighted at this judgment. He was told on a regular basis that he belonged in Ravenclaw (because of his studiousness) or worse yet, Slytherin (because of his ambition); he would not have admitted it, but he thought that actually being accepted as a Gryffindor would have been the nicest thing in the world. Now, he wasn't so sure.

Now, Percy was distinctly recalling the feeling of overwhelming pain as most of his ribs shattered, the sensation of crippling fear when he realized that he wasn't good enough. He had gone without thinking about it, without thinking about the consequences, and it had been brave, but it had also been exceptionally _stupid_. It had been, in short, _Gryffindor_. "No," he said, very firmly.

"No?" repeated Oliver, looking puzzled.

Percy stared at the ceiling, and made a decision. "No, I think that's quite enough Gryffindoring for the rest of my life, thank you."


	16. Becoming a Liar

The screaming lasted the entire car ride home.

"Mum, you can't, I'm a witch, I need to learn magic - "

"I can," said her mother, breathing very hard through her nose, "and I will."

"You don't seem to grasp," said her father sharply, "that you nearly died."

"Of course I do!" Hermione cried. "That's why I need to learn magic, to protect myself - "

"Not if you go to a proper school," retorted her mother, "where one doesn't need magic to survive past Halloween!"

Like that would do her much good, if one of the old pureblood lords decided her existence offended them (and given the number of their children she had shown up in the past two months, well). Hogwarts was probably safer for her than anywhere else in the world. "Mum, you heard Professor McGonagall, this sort of thing doesn't happen often, I was just in the wrong place at the wrong - "

"Be that as it may," interrupted her father, his knuckles turning white on the steering wheel, "it says a great deal about that place, that it was another student who had to rescue you, because the teachers were not competent enough!"

Hermione was immediately insulted. "Dad!" she said, "don't say things like that! Professor McGonagall is one of the most responsible, competent - "

"You nearly _died_," hissed her mother angrily, "and this Professor McGonagall admitted freely that she arrived too late, that had this other wizard boy not saved you - "

Percy. (She really hoped he was okay. For the five seconds or so she'd been conscious after he got punched into a wall, she'd been vaguely aware that Percy was bleeding rather a lot.) "That's because he's a prefect, Mum, that's his job - "

"And you really," said her mother disbelievingly, "you _really_ think you are safe in a place where the prefects are required to save the lives of the underclassmen, because the teachers cannot?"

"I'm sure McGonagall could've," insisted Hermione stubbornly, "she was just busy - important things - "

"Really. And what, pray tell, could be more important than the lives of her students?" demanded her mother, eyes flashing.

This argument was not going well. "Mum, they didn't know I was _there_! She was busy getting all the students out of the way, she was keeping everyone else safe, it was _my_ fault - "

"You are twelve," snapped her father, and it was the first time in her life Hermione had ever had her father so utterly dismiss her opinions on the basis of her age. Usually he encouraged her in her every precocious behavior, bought her whatever advanced books she wanted, listened when she had something to say. Her age had always been something to celebrate, _look, my daughter's brilliant and she's only twelve_. But this was dismissal, cold adult rejection. _You are twelve. _Hermione stopped cold, shocked.

"What?" she squeaked.

"You are _twelve_," her father repeated with a steely voice, "and it is the responsibility of adults to keep you safe. If your teachers are not doing that, then they are poor teachers, whether or not you did something wrong."

That ... didn't make a great deal of sense to Hermione. Why shouldn't it be her fault? "But - "

"Hermione," said her mother tiredly, "it shouldn't matter whether or not you made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. The problem is that these people created an environment in which a single mistake very nearly got you killed. That is something that should, quite simply, not ever happen at a school."

They went through the same argument several times, because Hermione, brilliant though she was, _was _only twelve, and she did not understand. Even when she did start to understand, she rejected it, because when you're a Muggleborn witch and know how to read between the lines of history books, you know that the magical legal system doesn't care what your parents have to say about anything, and that the teachers at Hogwarts can't help you. You know that Lucretia Black-Prewett murdered forty-seven Muggleborn children and never got tried for a single one, and that she didn't stop when You-Know-Who died, and vigilantes had killed her in 1984 because the system didn't do a thing, and she wasn't the only one. That wasn't the kind of thing that would just _go away _if you tried to go to a Muggle school instead. When you knew that sort of thing, the idea that you _weren't _responsible for your own safety felt very weird for Hermione. But she _tried _to explain this, and was told she was being silly, and when they got home, Hermione, for the first time in her life, stormed up the stairs into her bedroom and slammed the door.

Professor Dumbledore had not taken away her wand; he told McGonagall he was holding out hope that she would be allowed to return once her parents calmed down. He had warned her, however, that even if she did not return to Hogwarts, she was not legally permitted to do magic. He had warned her, more importantly, that the Ministry would arrest her and snap her wand if she did. (Thinking of this made her clutch it closer to her, frightened.)

The headmaster had looked very serious and very sad when he said this, and Hermione had felt the distressing, sinking feeling that he really didn't think she had a chance of coming back at all. She supposed she was probably not the first Muggleborn he had seen withdrawn from his school by parents who didn't understand, and she probably would not be the last. What was she going to do? She had been so excited to go to Hogwarts, to learn to do magic, of all things -

- and then, all at once, it had been ripped away from her, like a tenuous dream. _No, you are not allowed to do magic._ She could do little more than turn matches into needles and levitate feathers; parlor-tricks at best, and ones she wasn't even allowed to use! You had to have school credentials, the headmaster explained; you had to be seventeen _and _have passed at least one of your OWLs, that was why Hagrid the gamekeeper wasn't allowed to do magic. Once she was seventeen the Ministry wouldn't be able to track her, they wouldn't show up at her house in an instant and arrest her and snap her wand in half - but without OWL accreditation it's still be _illegal_ for her to do magic.

She stared down at her wand. She had already become so attached to it, and now it was practically nothing more than a useless stick of wood.

Hermione cried herself to sleep that night.

The next morning, however, she woke up with a plan practically fully-formed in her head, and she scrambled to her trunk, shifting through her piles of books in frenzied excitement.

Hogwarts wasn't the only magical school in the world.

Her parents knew about Beauxbatons - they'd seriously considered trying to send her there instead of Hogwarts, because her father was French - but they didn't know about the others. If they hadn't, Beauxbatons would have been a perfect choice, because unlike "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry" there was nothing in the title that said outright that it was a school of magic. It was implied if you spoke French, yes, but one could argue easily that _batons _did not mean _magic _wands - it could mean a conductor's baton, or something. She could have just told them she'd found a nice French school and _pretended _it was a Muggle school, they probably wouldn't investigate if she pretended she'd given up ...

But that was a moot point, because her parents knew about Beauxbatons. She would need a different one. Soon Hermione found what she was looking for: the book in which she'd read about other schools, from which she had pulled the information "Hogwarts is supposed to be the best school there is, you know" - and it gave a list.

Her excitement became somewhat less, however, when she realized how few schools there really were that could fulfill her basic criteria. It had to be unknown to her parents (so not Hogwarts or Beauxbatons), not obviously magical by its name (so that crossed out Salem Witches' Academy and the Conservatoire Magie in Montreal), and capable of providing her a decent magical education (which, if her standard was 'will allow me to get legal certification to use my wand in Britain and Europe', crossed out almost everything else).

Hermione stared at the list she'd written down, crossed through with black lines. There was only one school left.

And Durmstrang didn't accept Muggleborns.


	17. Hermione Granger-Nott

_November 14, 1991_

_Dear Headmaster Karkarov,_

_My name is Hermione Granger-Nott, although most know me only by my adoptive parents' name, Granger. I have recently left Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, partway through the first term of my first year, and consider this a wonderful oppurtunity to pursue better education, such as at your fine school. I have of course appropriately researched your admissions procedures, and feel that I am quite up to the task. For your convenience I have enclosed a photograph of my Nott family ring, which I hope is adequate proof of my blood status; I will of course bring the ring itself with me when I travel to your school, but I do not trust such a valuable heirloom to owl post. I am prepared to take the placement examination at any time that you would consider to be appropriate._

_With regard to my adoptive family, I am apologetic to say that they are Muggles. Near the end of Britain's Wizarding War, I was placed with them for my protection, and given the ring to identify myself if necessary. My biological parents subsequently died, failing to inform their relatives of where I had gone, and by the time anyone might have found out, I had become too much attached to my adoptive parents. Despite their lack of magic, they are rather pleasant to live with, and so I did not go out of my way to inform my magical relatives of the situation. In the interest of simplicity, I have told them that the school I wish very much to attend is a Muggle one, and I would appreciate it very much if you did not disabuse them of the inaccurate notion. _

_Eagerly awaiting a reply at your convenience,_

_Hermione Granger-Nott_

This letter was, of course, well over halfway composed of complete lies, but Hermione Granger was not going to let anything trivial like blood status prevent her from going to a decent magical school.

"Can't learn magic!" she scoffed to herself as she wrote, "who does Mum think she's _talking_ to - "

Hermione managed to mail the letter full of lies by taking a train into London on the pretext of buying schoolbooks, getting loose of her parents because they were both busy working, and going to the post office in Diagon Alley. The sheer inconvenience of this task made her resolve to buy an owl as soon as possible; but "as soon as possible" would likely not be any time soon. Her parents had relaxed their stern watchfulness when Hermione pretended tearful apology and assured them that they were completely right and that she'd find a good respectable Muggle boarding school to go to, but they would not likely overlook a post owl.

Besides, stealing extra money from her parents to buy more magical books had been plenty of guilt for the day. And Hermione was already carrying around plenty of guilt, by halfway through November. A week after her summary removal from Hogwarts, she had convinced her parents to take her to Diagon Alley "to change back our wizarding money, since we won't need it anymore", and tested her theory that she could use magic in Diagon Alley because there was so much magic there already. This had turned out to be, as far as she could tell, true, and she'd promptly taken advantage of it. The first inattentive pureblood wizard she spotted had suffered a careful magical pickpocketing. The only part of that letter that wasn't a lie was the bit about the ring; she really _did_ have a Nott family ring in her possession now.

(And her heart rate had _eventually _returned to normal.)

Of course, she'd had a very awkward conversation when she returned the second time with Tom the Barkeep.

"Ey, it's you again! Thought yer parents said ya weren't comin' back!"

"Um ... yes ... it's ... it's a long story," she had stammered. As she left, she made a mental note: _Get better at lying when put on the spot. _

In the meantime, she had every intention of not being caught unprepared with regard to the story she was going to tell the people at Durmstrang. She'd gone to some effort to compose a lie that was convincing and self-consistent, and contained some kernels of truth. For one thing, she wasn't going to try to convince anyone that her "adoptive" parents were wizards; that wouldn't hold up to any close scrutiny. Instead, if all went well, other wizards would collaborate in pretending to her parents that nothing strange was happening at all. (She suspected that the sort of pureblood supremacists who ran Durmstrang would probably not have any ethical objection to lying to Muggles. After all, as far as they were concerned, Muggles weren't people.) And if they thought _she _was pureblood, she would (hopefully) be able to get through her schooling without anyone trying to kill her. Which was, of course, the point.

Hermione had read enough about the Wizarding War to know that her story was plausible. With luck, even if the Nott patriarch were questioned, he would not be able to refute the story; she had not specified a specific Nott as her parent in her letter, and meant to choose a plausible one as soon as she got hold of a pureblood genealogy. And _surely_ no twelve-year-old witch would have been able to steal a _family ring_! (Frankly, most twelve-year-old witches probably couldn't. Hermione had had to spend an hour in a corner of Tom's bar practicing levitating things without people noticing, and even then it had been a nerve-wrackingly difficult task.)

After she'd stopped hyperventilating, the rest of her clandestine trip was spent in Flourish & Blotts. She'd got normal Muggle textbooks from a London shop, used and as cheap as possible. In Diagon Alley she could cast _reparo _on them, and then her parents wouldn't notice the discrepancy between the money she'd spent on them and the money they'd given her. If she had time, she might even read them; she did want to take GCSEs when she was the right age, just on principle. It would support the lie, if nothing else, and it really did seem like it would be a good idea to have Muggle certification as well as magical. Especially if something went terribly wrong.

So the rest of the money she'd been given, and the money she'd stolen, went straight towards buying as many books on as many magical subjects as she could possibly afford. She declined to buy nice or brand-new books in favor of getting as many as possible from the 'resell' bins, because the text was more important than the presentation. She had no idea when she'd next have a chance to be in a magical bookstore, and she really wanted to be prepared for Durmstrang's entrance exam.

When the cashier gave her a strange look, she smiled and said as innocently as possible, "I'm buying books for my mum!" To illustrate the point she waved her parchment, on which she had indeed written a list of subjects she wanted to get books on, as illegibly as possible. The wizard had shrugged and moved on; Hermione's gold was just as shiny as anyone else's, and she hadn't bought anything illegal.

Once home, Hermione told her parents she needed to catch up since she'd been reading magical books instead of Muggle ones ("Good to see you're handling this responsibly, dear"), and locked herself in her room, leaving only for mealtime. When an owl fluttered through her window a few days later, she'd skimmed through every book she'd bought and was starting on rereading them for memorization purposes.

_November 21, 1991_

_Dear Miss Granger-Nott,_

_I would be delighted to offer a place here at Durmstrang Academy to a witch of such fine blood. We are quite used to unusual situations here, and I assure you that I will be of the utmost circumspection regarding your caretakers. I have enclosed a Portkey which will transport you to my office at precisely eleven-thirty AM on December 16th, the first Monday of our holiday break. You may take the placement examination then, and if you do well, you may begin classes at the start of the spring term. I shall furnish you with a supplies list appropriate to your score._

_I would also strongly advise that, if you are not currently fluent in German, you make every effort to acquire the language. Many of our students' mother tongues are English, Russian, or Bulgarian, but our classes take place in German._

_At your service,_

_Durmstrang Headmaster Igor Ilyevich Karkarov_

Naturally, the next several weeks were spent in frantic studying. Hermione had no idea what they might expect her to know, and so she simply studied everything that she had to hand.

On the day of her examination, she bid good-bye to her parents at breakfast, and as they headed off to work, walked towards the subway station. Instead of getting on a train, however, she bought a German language primer from the travel office and sat quietly on a bench reading it, as she waited for eleven-thirty. No one bothered her; Hermione suspected that she simply didn't look that interesting. She was only a little girl in stockings and a warm black coat, reading a book and bothering no one; she could have been any child going to visit relatives for the holidays.

At eleven-twenty-five, she got up and walked casually into the bathroom, and reached into her pocket for the little wooden button which she had been told was a Portkey. Hopefully, no one would notice that she failed to walk back out of the -

"Good avternoon!" said a smooth Slavic voice, and Hermione reoriented herself to find to her confusion that she was lying on the floor of a carpeted, wood-paneled office.

"Oh," she said in surprise.

"Not traveled by Portkey before?" inquired the thin, goateed man who must be Durmstrang's Headmaster. Hermione shook her head. "Strange, is it not?" She nodded, feeling slightly overwhelmed. "Now, are you ready for your examination, Miss Nott?" There was a small desk and chair set up in the corner. On it sat a thick stack of parchment, an inkwell, and a quill.

"Oh," said Hermione, finding her voice as she scrambled off the floor, "yes, of course." It felt very strange to be addressed as _Miss Nott,_ but of course she ought to have expected it. The sort of pureblood supremacists who ran this school were exactly the sort of people who considered her Muggle parents completely unimportant, and so to them their name would be equally irrelevant. She had to shake off her feeling of unease before she could begin.

_I will pretend not to mind. I want to learn magic. I have to learn magic, _she told herself. It was potentially a matter of life and death.

The examination was very, very long, but it was thankfully written in English. By the time Hermione had finished writing, her hand was cramping terribly and the sun had gone rather low in the sky. Headmaster Karkarov appeared to be ignoring her completely. But the moment she stopped writing, he looked up from whatever it was he was doing at his much larger desk, and inquired, "Done, Miss Nott?"

"Um - yes, sir," she said.

To her surprise, there turned out not to be any practical part of the examination at all. When she hesitantly inquired about this, Karkarov laughed. It was a strange, strained noise, as if it did not quite belong. He was not a man designed for laughter. "Ve are not permitted to ask you to do magic, Miss Nott, until you haf enrolled."

That made sense. Otherwise she might set off some sort of anti-underage-magic sensors. "Oh."

"Please vait, I shall score this." Hermione steeled herself for a long wait, but this turned out not to be necessary. Karkarov simply waved his wand over the stack of parchment, said a number of words in German that she did not know, and then turned to look at her with abject astonishment on his face. "You vere first year at Hogvarts?"

"Yes, sir?" said Hermione, puzzled and slightly anxious.

"You score for _third_!" said the Bulgarian wizard, pointing almost accusingly at the paper.

"Oh," said Hermione, who could not help but smile as the feeling of relief washed over her. "So, I passed, then?"

And so it was that Hermione Granger, first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, became Hermione Nott, third year at Durmstrang Academy.

It says everything that you need to know about Hermione Granger, really, that skipping two full years of school did not at all prevent her from promptly becoming the highest scoring student in her year.


	18. Study Habits

They felt the loss keenly.

When the rest of the first-year Gryffindors heard that Hermione had been withdrawn, the sense of guilt - and of loss - spread through the entire group almost instantly, and then hung over them like a dark cloud. With Hermione gone, there were only six of them - Parvati and Lavender, Ron and Neville, and Dean and Seamus. Every time a teacher asked a question in class, everyone turned to look for Hermione's eager hand and found it absent. They hadn't realized just how much she was a part of their group until she wasn't there anymore, and every one of them felt awful for having excluded her so badly as they had. Not one of them had tried to do anything about it.

Not one of them had bothered to think about what they were doing, and they'd nearly gotten a classmate killed. They would have, if not for Percy. That, in short, made them terrible people. Their classes were silent and gloomy; their teachers looked on them with concern as they trudged around listlessly and barely listened to the lectures. None of them were doing very well on any of their work, but no one really had the heart to call them on it, not even Snape. _  
><em>

When they'd all been wallowing in guilt for about a week and a half, Ron Weasley called a meeting.

Parvati and Lavender puzzledly followed Seamus up the boys' staircase, since they were allowed to do that, and with that the entire first-year Gryffindor class was convened in the first-year boys' dormitory, since Ron had already fetched Neville and Dean. Ron did not beat around the bush. "I think we're being stupid about this," he said flatly.

Parvati looked deeply offended. "What d'you mean? We can't _not be sad_, Ron, because unlike you, some of us actually _care_ - "

"Of course I care!" he snapped angrily, and Parvati subsided rather confusedly. "No, obviously we deserve to feel bad, _especially_ me, and I do!" Indeed, he'd been moody and depressed ever since Halloween, even moreso than the others, visibly blaming himself for what had happened. No one had really been able to tell him it _wasn't _his fault, which hadn't helped. He forged on. "But there's no point in just - like - being _pointlessly_ sad! We should be doing something!"

"Like what?" asked Seamus curiously. He had fetched the girls when asked, but he really didn't have any more of an idea what was going on than they did.

"Neville thought of an idea," said Ron, and Neville winced as everyone looked at him. He hated being the center of attention; that was why he'd asked Ron to do this on his behalf. "And I think it's a great idea. Hermione was all about learning and getting good grades and stuff, right?"

There was a chorus of "yeah, I guess"-type answers. "But what's your _point_, Ron?" asked Lavender rather snippishly. She, like Parvati, was still rather annoyed with Ron. They blamed him specifically for Hermione's near-death, with admittedly good reason. Lavender insisted that _her _teasing had been much less harmful, which might or might not be true; no one really wanted to argue about it, when she clearly felt almost as guilty as Ron.

"If this is just another rant about how stupid homework is, I'm leaving," declared Dean with some asperity, getting up from his bed. He was a sports fan, but contrary to the stereotype, still had a better work ethic than most of his roommates (he was doing his work rather _badly_ as of late, but he was at least _doing _it, which was better than Ron and Lavender were managing).

"No!" said Ron forcefully, and Dean sat back down in surprise at Ron's vehemence. "No, Neville's idea was, if we're going to, like, remember her properly, or whatever, shouldn't we be studying, not moping?"

The sheer bizarreness of _Ron Weasley_ suggesting that everyone should study more silenced the room for several minutes. He did not suddenly declare it a joke, like they had might have guessed, and the silence lengthened. Strangely, Ron seemed extraordinarily serious. As they all tried to figure out what was going on, he looked around at them expectantly, waiting for an answer.

"That ... sort of makes sense, actually," said Parvati eventually, looking bemused.

She wasn't the only one caught off guard. "So you're proposing we ... what, form a study group?" asked Seamus, frowning.

"Yeah, basically," agreed Ron, nodding. "Neville said, and I agree with him, that if Hermione's not going to be here to be brilliant and answer questions and things, we're just going to have to _all_ be smarter to make up for it." They were all still giving him dubious looks, and he clenched his fists in determination. "If we just keep being stupid and lazy," he said, "we're still the same people that almost got her killed." Ron's face took on a fierce light. "And I, for one, really _don't_ want to be that guy."

Hesitantly, Neville said, "Me, neither."

After that quiet declaration, in the face of Ron's bright orange ferocity, no one else could quite decline.

From that day forward the six Gryffindors, who in a better world might have been eight, or even ten, met every day in the library after classes, with their books and their parchment and their quills and ink. After Ron's impromptu speech, there were no more loud declarations, no more arguments, no nagging or complaining, no fuss at all. No one wanted to talk about it, but they all wanted to do something. So they just all, without discussing it, showed up every day to sit at the same table in the corner, and got out their books, and worked.

By the end of term, Seamus had stopped setting things on fire in Charms class, and all six of them had succeeded at least in getting shiny matches in Transfiguration, though only Dean could make his pointy enough to draw blood. They took turns taking notes in History of Magic class, and proofread each others' essays. As they left their last Potions session of the term, Neville announced with a gleeful smile that he hadn't melted a single cauldron since before Halloween.

Parvati Patil sighed, smiled, patted him on the shoulder, and said wryly, "Small victories."


	19. Family Friendships Fixed

The Weasleys were the only Gryffindors to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas, since their parents were visiting Bill in Egypt. So they had the run of the tower, which the twins at least took full advantage of. Ron, however, was by now very attached to the idea that studying made him a better person. And if there wasn't much you could say about his enthusiasm for knowledge, still it would be hard to suggest that he was the kind of person who lacked for stubbornness. So he picked up his books and his stack of imperfect homework assignments and sat with Percy, studying close enough to the fire that they could roast things and eat them as they worked.

Percy answered every question Ron asked him, not seeming bothered in the least by doing this while he was writing essays or drawing puzzling diagrams that Ron suspected were Arithmancy. Occasionally, he even assented to take a break and play chess. So Ron, fascinated and feeling like he was learning more than he had in the last several weeks of class as he figured out the flaws in his first term's work, ignored Fred and George every time they tried to draw him into a game of Exploding Snap or toss-the-salamander. The twins were utterly baffled by this behavior, but after Percy hexed them a few dozen times they left their brothers alone.

Eventually Ron asked, a little hesitantly, "Percy, why are you helping me so much?"

Percy had actually looked up from his work that time. Up til that point he'd been absently answering questions without really pausing in his writing, smiling faintly and giving explanations that actually were somewhat more helpful than those in the textbook, but at this his quill stilled. He gave Ron a puzzled look. "You're my _brother_," he pointed out, as though this should have been extremely obvious.

It probably really should have occurred to someone, Ron thought in bemusement, that it was their fault. The reason Percy stayed to himself among the family was simply that no one ever actually asked him to do anything; no one ever even _tried _to involve him. He must have once tried, but eventually Percy had started to give up - he must have felt as if he were unwanted. It wasn't as if they'd done anything to discourage the feeling. Thereafter, Ron resolved not only to study with him, but to play chess with his brother more often. Percy was a better opponent than any of his three dormmates, after all.

(When he said this out loud, he'd been a little surprised at how widely his brother smiled.)

* * *

><p>On Christmas day, Percy ambled downstairs with a faint look of pleased bemusement on his face. He was wearing his Weasley sweater, which was helpfully labeled <em>P<em> for _prefect_ (Ron snorted), nibbling absently on a piece of fudge that probably had come with it, and staring at a piece of parchment. The twins, who had been throwing tree ornaments at each other, paused, looking curious. "What's up, Perce?" they chorused. Ron looked up from feeding cockroach clusters to Scabbers as Percy laughed. It sounded oddly genuine, deeper and warmer than Percy's usual uncomfortable, nervous snicker.

"Oliver," he said, in tones of faint amazement, "sent me a set of OWL review books." The other Weasleys exchanged surprised glances. It was common knowledge that Oliver Wood had found something Quidditch-related to give to Percy for every single Christmas and birthday since the two had found themselves the only Gryffindor boys in their year, in a somewhat misguided and only haphazardly successful attempt to convince his roommate to 'appreciate the sport properly.' Percy, still looking faintly astonished, held out the note, which Fred accepted and read aloud, because Percy was self-conscious about that kind of thing. The twins were never ones to shy from attention, even if it was only attention from Ron and Percy.

"'_Since I know you wanted them. They're not brand new, couldn't afford it -_ '" Fred rolled his eyes. "As if anyone but Malfoy could. ' _- so I had my sister do a bunch of repairing charms on hers,'_ huh, Oliver has a sister?"

"Four years older than us," agreed Percy absently, still looking puzzled. "Graduated the year before you two got here."

"Oh." Fred looked back down at the note. "_'Hope you'll find them useful. I know I keep teasing you about exams, but I know they really are as important to you as the Cup is to me, even if I don't get it. So - sorry about that?'_ Aww, how sweet," Fred drawled teasingly, and gave Percy a look that said he was probably going to mock him about this for the rest of the holiday. But he did seem to grasp that this was at least somewhat serious. "'_And I'll make sure you have plenty of time to study if you stop looking at me like I killed your owl every time we have practice, okay? Your friend, Oliver.'" _Fred snorted. "Oh my god, Percy, do you really do that?"

"Um - yeah, a bit," admitted Percy, turning a bit red. It never failed to make Oliver look deeply unhappy, but it had consistently failed to prevent Percy from getting dragged out onto the pitch anyway.

"Geez, no wonder Oliver's been all sulky at practice lately," whistled George.

"You are the worst friend of _all time_," declared Fred dramatically.

Percy snatched the note back, looking annoyed. "I am going to _try_ to be _better_, okay?" he said sharply through gritted teeth, pocketing the note and crossing his arms. If Oliver could admit studying was important, he owed it to his friend to at least _try _to not ruin his Quidditch dreams.

Fred shrugged. "That's all we ask," said George brightly.

Thereafter, when term resumed, Percy politely asked Ron to watch his books and followed the team outside under his own power whenever they had practice. And in turn, true to his word, Oliver Wood made a concerted effort not to prevent his roommate from having time to study for his OWLs. To the delight of the rest of the team, Percy was a much better flier when he was neither terrified nor furious.

* * *

><p>" - just saying it's weird, is all," said Fred as he toweled his hair dry.<p>

"What's weird, Fred?" inquired Angelina from across the locker room, where she was struggling with the laces on her armbraces. Given the sheer density of magic around Hogwarts, it wasn't exactly _surprising_ that they had somehow developed a malicious tendency to re-tie themselves every time she tried to take them off, but it was still extremely _annoying_. "If _you_ two are concerned, I think the rest of us should be - er - " She stalled out, looking like she wasn't totally sure what the appropriate solution was to something that alarmed the Weasley twins.

"Running away very fast?" suggested Alicia dryly. It was, after all, widely agreed that the best way to handle anything Fred and George were involved in was to not be near it. Angelina nodded firmly. Good answer.

"Maybe!" agreed George brightly, undaunted. "See, did you know that our little brother Ron - "

" - who four months ago totally believed us when we told him he could use a rhyme to turn Scabbers yellow - " interjected Fred, waggling his fingers dramatically. Charlie had tried the same joke on Percy some four years before. Perhaps predictably, Percy had already read his textbooks, and so was not fooled. Ron, however ...

George finished, in a tone which suggested great amazement, " - is getting higher marks than most of the _Ravenclaws_ in his year?"

"For the last time, George," said Percy sharply, "it is _not_ - "

"I'm not George, I'm Fred," said the twin he had just addressed, rather indignantly. As it was in fact the one Angelina had called Fred less than thirty seconds ago, this was a plausible objection, but Percy was entirely unapologetic. He just rolled his eyes, and gave George a deeply skeptical look. There was a distinct silence; and then after it had stretched on uncomfortably for awhile, George gave up. "Fine, I am George," he admitted mulishly. The only thing the twins had never been able to pull on Percy since they began Hogwarts was the twin switch, though they had never stopped trying. It frustrated them to no end that he could invariably tell them apart, and refused to explain how.

(Percy would deny until his dying day that he had learned to cast identifier spells silently sometime in his third year, after outright begging Flitwick to teach him, and hit his brothers with them every time they walked into a room.)

Percy grinned a little mischievously. It was still a little weird for everyone that instead of taking a running leap towards critical melting point as OWLs approached, Percy actually seemed to be mellowing under the influence of Oliver and his brothers. But at least no one twitched in shock when he smiled like that anymore; progress. "As I was saying," he said smoothly, ignoring the sulky look George was giving him, "it is not a crime to get good grades. I, for one, am very proud of Ron."

"At least Ginny will probably still be fun," grumbled Fred, apparently giving up Ron as a lost cause.

"Who's Ginny?" inquired Katie.

"Our little sister. Great shot with a dungbomb," explained George.

"And no one ever suspects the little one!" added Fred brightly. Apparently everyone found this description outrageously adorable, because all three Chasers were squealing all the way back up to the castle about how cute it was that they were teaching their baby sister to follow in their footsteps. This, despite Angelina and Alicia having been complaining less than an hour previously about how annoying it was to have to put up with the twins in classes.

(Percy, despite being - as far as he knew - the only member of his family who currently had a girlfriend, would be the first to admit that he really didn't understand girls.)


	20. Who The Heck Is Tom Riddle, Anyway?

"Hey, that's weird," said Fred, frowning down at the Map as he leaned against the wall. George was a few feet from him, scanning the wall for the entrance to a secret passage the Map indicated would lead down several floors from the Defense classroom down to Transfiguration, which would save them a walk on Tuesdays and Thursdays. More importantly, it would confuse and impress the rest of their classmates, which was of course the point.

George looked up from where he was examining a wall sconce under wandlight. "Somebody awake?" he inquired curiously. It was past midnight, and Fred's keeping an eye on the Map in case of interruption was mostly a useful habit. They hadn't been expecting to run into anyone; Filch was out on the grounds delivering Ron and Malfoy to detention with Hagrid (maybe Ron wasn't a lost cause after all), and periodically checking the seventh floor showed that Mrs. Norris was skulking around Ravenclaw Tower. The Map didn't show everything all at the same time, but it showed you whatever you thought was important, which was just as good if you had a good sense of priorities.

"Apparently," said Fred, "It's - Quirrell, I think - just look." He pointed at the Map with his lit wand, and George paced over and looked, too. Fred had been thus far not worried about Quirrell, who was pacing around his office down the hall but showed no signs of leaving. But a moment ago, Quirrell's name had started _flickering_, and going all blurry, and then it showed "Tom Riddle" instead, and then blurred out and went back to "Quirinus Quirrell," and then changed again, flickering quicker and quicker.

George didn't bother to say anything affirmative, like 'Oh, yeah, that _is _weird,' or 'Nice catch'; there was no point. It was simply a brute fact of the universe that they had the same opinions about everything, that they tended to think the exact same thoughts when given the same information. The only time they ever needed to talk to each other was if, like a few moments earlier, they were observing different things. (This was why, perhaps, it had been traditional to kill one of a pair of magical twins even as late as the previous century.) Instead George pulled a scrap of parchment from his pocket, and a quill that thankfully still had some ink, and scratched onto it _Tom Riddle, _so that it could be looked up later.

As they watched the name settled, and then Tom Riddle stood stock-still in the middle of his office for a long second - and then he dove out the window. Fred and George made a collective and involuntary gasping sound of shock; they were on the fifth floor, and it was a very long drop to the ground. The Defense professor did not apparently seem to mind this obvious problem; as the Map followed him across the grounds, he sped across it at a rather alarming speed, and disappeared into the Forbidden Forest.

The Weasley twins concluded that he probably had a broomstick. Not being able to see unanchored inanimate objects like that was one of the Map's limitations, after all. Although there wasn't any sensible reason for a teacher to have a broomstick just lying around in their office, there was no other way to explain his apparent failure to experience injury from falling five stories. For that matter Professor Quirrell seemed like the type to be terrified of broomstick riding, but it wasn't like he was _immune to gravity _or something ...

Then they spotted Mrs. Norris coming down the steps, and bolted in a hurry, saving the mystery for later.


	21. Detention's Not Usually This Scary

"This is your fault."

"_My_ fault? You're the one who was stealing."

"Longbottom _left _it! It's not my fault he's a hopeless idiot!"

"It's your fault _you're _an obnoxious git!"

"I'm not the one who turned a perfectly respectable flying contest into a wrestling match!"

"You said 'come and get it', dumbass!"

"And ruined a very expensive shirt in the process, might I add."

"Oh, what a _tragedy_."

"Boys!" interrupted Hagrid gruffly, "quiet down now, we're goin' inter the Forest an' you don' wanna go attractin' attention."

"We're _what_?" said Draco in a high-pitched tone of horror, abruptly distracted from glaring at his redheaded nemesis. "You can't make us go in there! There's - werewolves, and things!" Ron snorted, and the Slytherin consciously calmed his tone. After taking a breath, he instead said sharply, "My father will hear about this!"

"We're goin' inter the Forest," said Hagrid implacably, ignoring this threat entirely. "Aren' no werewolves, but there's plenty what's dangerous in there, so yeh stick close t'me, yeh hear?" Then, as Ron and Draco had a very stressed-out and silent contest in which they each tried to pretend not to be as scared as the other, he explained about the dying unicorns, and what they were looking for. The two first-years in his charge exchanged frightened glances, and then realized what they'd just done and glared at each other instead. Evidently, neither could figure out how to complain about this without appearing frightened, so they ended up saying nothing. Nervously, they followed Hagrid into the Forest, with Fang ambling along behind them.

It was an unnerving and quiet half-hour before a flash of silver caught their attention. Ron and Draco both turned and pointed, which spawned a whispered "I saw it first!" "No you didn't, I did!" argument, cut short sharply when Fang made a very unhappy whining noise and backed away several steps. Hagrid stepped through the trees, hefting his substantial crossbow, and gestured to them to follow. The source of the silver soon became apparent: unicorn blood, reflecting the light from Hagrid's lantern. And a unicorn a few feet away, with something dark and cloaked leaning over it.

"Hold this," said Hagrid brusquely, shoving the lantern into Draco's hand. It was larger than his head and caused him to stagger somewhat with its weight; but with eyes narrowed at Ron's smirk, he refused to complain. Hagrid leveled his crossbow at the stranger and said, "Oi! You! Git away from tha poor beast - "

It looked up from its meal, and all they could see of its face were fangs dripping silver blood and glowing red eyes. The thing - for it must have been a thing, not a man - emitted a horrifying screeching noise and leapt. Like a bat spreading its wings it left the ground and arrowed straight for the kids, still screeching, looking very much like a monster straight out of Hell. All pretense of bravery forgotten, Draco shrieked and turned to run. Ron, for his part, tried to duck and draw his wand at the same time, which caused him to tangle himself in his cloak and sent him sprawling unceremoniously to the ground.

For a split horrible second Ron was convinced he was going to die; and then a crossbow bolt the size of a spear thudded into the side of the monster's chest, and it twisted in the air, its momentum thrown wildly sideways by the weapon. The screeching sound turned to horrid gargling and the creature bolted, vanishing into the trees with alarming speed. Hagrid shouldered his crossbow and strode over to Ron, lifting him to his feet and shaking him slightly to dislodge the dirt. "Y'alright, Ron?"

"Um," said Ron, his voice a bit squeaky. He hazarded, "Um, yeah, I, kinda?"

The gamekeeper nodded approvingly, as Ron disentangled himself from his cloak and got shakily to his feet. "Now where'd that ruddy Malfoy go?" grumbled Hagrid, picking up a whining Fang and scanning the trees. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), Draco had left with the lantern, and the light was still visible at this distance. Ron, trying to get his breathing under control, followed at a disjointed jog as Hagrid strode into the treeline without much concern for the presence or absence of an actual path.

When they found Malfoy, he was surrounded by centaurs with bows drawn, and looked very much like he would dearly have preferred to stay and be menaced by the mysterious beast Hagrid had shot.

"Is this yours, Hagrid?" said the tallest of the centaurs, a dark brown creature with piercing green eyes and a distinct expression of distaste. He was looking at Draco as if he were an unwelcome dog who had urinated on the carpet. If Ron had not been busy still trying to stop hyperventilating, he would have been better able to express how funny he found this. Still, he made a mental note to tell Neville, who would probably enjoy the mental image. The centaur continued, looking rather annoyed, "Ronan told us you were hunting the great evil that plagues our forest," he shot a red-haired centaur a sharp look, "but he failed to mention that you were bringing foals."

Hagrid sighed. "Yep," he said apologetically, "sorry 'bout that, Magorian, that's my fault, I ought've said summat. Professor Dumbledore wanted 'em given a sharp scare; 'spect he thought we'd not find nothin' tonight." He gave Ron a look that was probably supposed to have been reassuring. Ron mostly still felt like he was in shock, but it did make him feel slightly better that Hogwarts detention did not _normally _involve being almost murdered by horrible unicorn-eating vampire bat things.

"Ah, but you did find something," said the red-haired centaur whose name was Ronan, looking delighted. "And you're a bolt lighter than usual."

"Aye, shot the bugger," said Hagrid, which made several centaurs look grudgingly pleased. He continued, "with any luck it'll be movin' slow. I gotta take these kids back up ter the school." As he said this, he reached between a few centaurs, who neatly sidestepped. Hagrid caught Draco by the back of his shirt, picking him up and then setting him down next to Ron, who shot him a viciously delighted look that said very clearly _I am never letting you live this down, ever. _Hagrid bent his head at Magorian; the motion was somewhat awkward due to the enormous boarhound he was still carrying in one arm, but was at least recognizable as a respectful bow. "Lemme know if there's anythin' else I can do ter help, aye?"

"We shall, Hagrid," said Magorian gravely, "your assistance has been appreciated as always."

A black centaur, who had been staring up at the sky for the last several minutes, said, "Vega and Altair are unusually bright tonight, have you noticed that, Magorian?"

Hagrid took this as his cue to leave, shooing Ron and Draco ahead of him and dropping Fang to the ground again in order to retrieve his lantern from Draco. Neither of the kids spoke, but Ron kept shooting Draco rather smug looks, to which Draco responded with glares while unhappily trying to smooth his ruffled hair.

Once they had crossed the tree line, Ron took a deep and amazingly reassuring breath and then said, "What did he mean about the stars, Hagrid?" He couldn't remember which stars had been mentioned, but had at least been paying enough attention in Astronomy recently to recognize the words as names of stars.

Hagrid shook his shaggy head unhappily. "Yeh never know, with them," he grumbled. "Might mean peace an' good huntin', might mean we're all gonna die. Don' bother askin', neither."

"What _was _that - that _thing_?" demanded Draco, who had taken slightly longer to regain his voice, but had what he clearly considered a much more pressing question.

"Can't rightly say," said Hagrid, shrugging. "At any rate, I hope you lot've learned yer lesson about breakin' the rules." He nodded to Filch, who was grinning nastily at the rattled first-years. "Off yeh go, then."

As soon as Hagrid turned and left, Ron turned and grinned at Draco as they walked behind Filch back into the castle. "You ran!" he said, entirely delighted. "You ran away, you coward!" No longer in the presence of the terrifying monster, he found it much easier to mock the Slytherin for this failing.

"You would've, too, if you hadn't tripped and _fallen _like an idiot," complained Draco.

"I was trying to draw my wand!" protested Ron.

Draco rolled his eyes and drawled, "Fat lot of good that did you."

"Didn't get me almost shot full of arrows by centaurs, neither!"

"They were not going to _shoot _me," said Draco confidently, much more confidently than he might have while there were actually arrows pointed at him. "They wouldn't dare!"

Ron snorted. "The big one looked like he wanted to cut your head off and put it on his wall for a decoration."

"Shut _up_," snapped Draco snippily, and turned on his heel to head down the steps to the dungeons. Ron shrugged and headed for the stairs, feeling secure in the knowledge that at least if he'd been terrified, he'd been _less _terrified than Malfoy, and that made him a proper Gryffindor. Let the Hat tell him he ought to be in Slytherin _now_.

* * *

><p>Fred and George caught Ron halfway up the stairs to Gryffindor Tower, and chorused, "How was detention?", grinning. They'd just narrowly escaped Mrs. Norris and were in much better spirits than their brother, and felt it their filial duty to annoy him as much as possible before he went to bed.<p>

"We had to go into the Forbidden Forest," grumbled Ron. "It was _awful_. Hagrid was looking for some monster that was killing unicorns, and we _found _it, and it tried to kill me, and then Hagrid shot it and it scarpered. Pig snout." Then he grinned, as he climbed through the portrait hole. "Bright side, Malfoy almost got shot by a herd of centaurs, we had to rescue him."

To his surprise, the twins did not laugh or even smile as they followed him through the portrait hole. "Killing unicorns, you say?" said Fred curiously.

"In the forest?" added George.

"Um ... yeah?" said Ron.

"_Fascinating_," chorused the twins, and then were up the stairs and out of sight before Ron could ask them what they meant.


	22. Charlie Will Be Proud

Oliver clapped Percy on the back as they got ready to head out onto the pitch. "You'll do _fine_, Perce," he said, "you've gotten way better in practice!" Percy's total disbelief must have shown on his face, because Oliver changed tack. "Besides, their Seeker's not that great. The reserve's way better, this third-year kid called Diggory who's already calling half the shots, but he's just reserve. Hufflepuff never swaps starting players until they graduate, not unless someone gets hurt, so Hornby's still gonna be the one you're flying against."

Fred said, "We'll be sure not to hurt him, then," and Alicia giggled.

Oliver stretched, and grinned at Percy, clearly trying to be reassuring. "Just do what you did last time, keep the game running as long as you can." It felt like a tall order; making the game run _longer _was the exact _opposite _of what he actually wanted, especially since it mostly involved flinging himself dramatically into other peoples' way in order to distract them. But Oliver was looking confident, so he tried to nod as the Quidditch captain said, "We'll be fine. Give us enough time and we've _got _this."

Percy did not feel nearly so confident.

Still, flying had turned out to be quite a lot of fun when he didn't work himself into a panic about it. He found that if he flew high enough, he could keep an eye on the opposing Seeker and even watch the game, which gave Lee Jordan's commentary a great deal more meaning (he could actually observe Angelina shooting across the field shortly before Lee yelled "GRYFFINDOR SCORES!", for example). And if he stuck around the Hufflepuff Seeker closely enough, he could get in the way every time John Hornby (he was, if Percy recalled correctly, in seventh year, like Slytherin's Seeker) looked like he'd spotted something.

It wasn't as hard as he was expecting, once he stopped stressing out about it so much. He just intermittently cut across Hornby's trajectory, causing the Hufflepuff to veer off course in alarm. Practice had paid off (he spent most of the Gryffindor practices rehearsing exactly this maneuver, getting in the way of the Chasers). By an hour into the game, his yellow-robed opponent looked like he was spitting nails, Gryffindor was sixty points in the lead, and Percy was starting to understand why everyone enjoyed this game so much.

Percy was rather proud of himself, especially since he was fairly certain his broomstick was outmatched. He was flying Charlie's old Nimbus 1000, which had been given to him in his second year when Charlie mysteriously acquired a Cleansweep Seven. (Charlie had flatly refused to explain to anyone where he'd gotten the money for that broom, which at the time had been the best on the market, but Bill was prone to breaking into helpless giggles whenever asked about it and Percy suspected that there had been illegal activity involved.) The decades-old broom had been good in its time, and Percy was growing quite fond of it, but Hornby had a modified Silver Arrow that Percy was positive could outpace him, if he missed his block and found himself in a race.

At which point they'd lose, since they had to be _more than _a hundred and fifty points in the lead for Percy's failure not to lose them the game. They were only winning by sixty; Gryffindor was better than Hufflepuff, but not _that _much better.

He was still thinking gloomily about this when a glint of gold drew his gaze away from the Bludger he'd just narrowly ducked and to the Snitch, which was hovering innocuously a few feet from his left ear. Percy reached out almost automatically, forgetting for a moment that he was in the middle of the air. He lost his grip on his broomstick, spun crazily, and dropped nearly thirty feet before he righted himself, dizzy.

To his immense surprise, what appeared to be three different Golden Snitches were fluttering in his several hands. "Oh," said Percy, blinking, as the image resolved itself into one Snitch in his right hand, wings fluttering around his fingers. "I ... oh, goodness, how pretty." He had never actually examined a Snitch close-up before, since the flesh-memory enchantments meant they weren't allowed to use real Snitches for most practices. This one was glinting in the sunlight, and Percy was utterly distracted by it, nearly unaware of the eruption of sound that had just happened in the stands as Lee Jordan announced in surprised delight that Gryffindor had just won the game.

(By two hundred and ten points, some part of Percy's brain noted absently. With their loss by seventy last time, they were now at a positive hundred and sixty. Slytherin had beaten Ravenclaw by only twenty and Ravenclaw had flattened Hufflepuff by two hundred, so that meant Slytherin had positive ninety and Ravenclaw positive one-eighty. Even if Slytherin beat Hufflepuff by a similar margin, Gryffindor had a shot at winning the Cup this year if they beat Ravenclaw by enough in May ... )

Percy's reverie, during which he had sunk slowly to the ground still staring at the Snitch, was interrupted by the twins tackling him.

"_Well done!_" they crowed in unison.

Percy finally noticed the crowd screeching. "Did we just win?" he asked in surprise.

"_You _just won," corrected Oliver, landing in a flurry of sand and delight with the Chasers not far behind. "See, I _told _you you're not horrible when you put your mind to it!"

"Huh," said Percy, still staring at the Snitch.

For the first time in his life, he really felt like a _Weasley. _


	23. History of Nobility

Study time.

Neville was paraphrasing his notes, because it had been his turn to take notes in History of Magic the previous week while everyone else did other work. It turned out that they all did much better in the class if they took turns staying awake and then shared their notes, because then _at least one _person was paying attention and could explain in sensible words. " - And then a bunch of the Malfoys and all of the Dirwents died," Neville was saying, "and there was this huge kerfuffle because Gringotts is in charge of arbitrating Great House disputes and the goblins wouldn't do it because of the war - "

"Wait, wait, wait, stop," interrupted Dean, "what on Earth is a Great House?"

"Um," said Neville, caught off-guard. It had never occurred to him that Muggles _didn't _have a political system in which noble families wielded a substantial portion of political power. "A Noble House - we usually call them the Great Houses, there are seven - is ... a House, a wizarding family I mean, that has a hereditary Lord?" he offered after a moment, because that was the obvious identifying characteristic.

Ron added helpfully, "Usually they're old pureblood families with lots of money, like the Malfoys, and they get Wizengamot votes."

It was Parvati who thought of the obvious question. "How does a family _become _a Great House?" she inquired. "I mean, if this has been a thing since the twelfth century goblin wars, obviously they must have changed at some point, like, there's no way seven specific families could manage to keep having male children for that long, right? The odds are astrological."

"Astronomical," corrected Seamus, who had just written an essay about word choice for Professor Sinistra after making an inopportune comment about moon signs in her hearing.

"Sure, that," said Parvati absently. (This was one of the things, the others had noticed, which was different between her and Lavender, who were often treated by many people as interchangeable. Lavender would be annoyed if corrected; Parvati was too used to Padma doing it all the time to even notice.) "Anyway there's got to be a rule about that, right?" she continued. "So how come the goblins had to do it at all?"

Neville considered that. He didn't have it in his notes, but he was somewhat naturally equipped to handle this question, since he himself was a member of a so-called Noble House. "Well," he said, "I think there are a bunch of normal inheritance rules, like, if they don't have a male heir it just goes to the nearest female heir, which is how the names change sometimes. I think the House of Greengrass used to have a different name until all the male heirs died, and then the title went to a married witch whose husband's name was Greengrass?"

"Okay, but what if they _all _die?" pointed out Seamus.

"Well, that's the point, I think," said Neville. "Binns didn't actually say what happened exactly with the Dirwents, but there wasn't an heir at all and so I think _that's_ when Gringotts is supposed to step in and ennoble a new Great House. They've got a bunch of standard rules, too, though, so usually you can guess who they're going to pick, my Gran said." He thought about this for a moment, tapping his quill absently against his notes. Neville had gotten much more comfortable answering questions ever since he'd noticed that he could answer them _correctly _if he tried hard enough to learn all the answers, like Hermione had. "Like, I think if one person is responsible for the extinction of a House, whoever kills that person gets to be the new one, outside the normal rules? But the standard otherwise is that whoever's got the most money in Gringotts gets it, because, you know, goblins."

"Well that's horribly unfair," grumbled Ron.

"I completely agree," said Neville, as Dean and Seamus nodded mutinously. "That's how they've been doing it since forever, though, and I kind of suspect that it might be one of the reasons we keep having wars with goblins. Actually, I think it might happen again pretty soon?" He pulled out a fresh piece of paper, and wrote in block capitals the names of the seven Noble Houses, and stared at it, frowning.

**BLACK / ****BONES / ****GREENGRASS / ****LONGBOTTOM / ****MALFOY / ****POTTER / ****SMITH**

Then he pointed. "These are the seven Great Houses right now," he explained. This was the sort of thing that had been impressed upon him as a child, frequently enough and with enough force that unlike most of the things his grandmother had tried to teach him, much of it had sunk in. "Most of the Blacks are either dead or in Azkaban, and their Head of House is pretty old. Susan Bones - she's in our Herbology class - is the only Bones left except for her great-aunt who isn't married, so even if Susan has kids the name'll change. There's a Lord Greengrass right now but he's only got daughters, so that's a bit up in the air, especially since a lot of the time daughters of Great Houses marry people from other Great Houses - like I'd bet you a lot of money at least one of them marries Malfoy - and if they both do that, you still end up one House short if Lord Greengrass dies without having a son." And then there was something complicated about Wizengamot votes which frankly Neville did not understand at all and would not try to explain, but which had some interaction with the way Lord Malfoy had way more political power than anyone should ever be allowed to have. He continued, "I'm the only Longbottom except for my great-uncle, my Gran married into the family so she doesn't count. My great-uncle Algie hasn't got kids, so - "

"Wait, _you're _a Noble House heir?" interjected Seamus in surprise.

"Um," said Neville, in some embarrassment, "yeah? That's why my Gran was so dead-set on forcing magic out of me, she was afraid I'd be a Squib and then I'd be disqualified and she'd lose her Wizengamot votes."

"You just said she married into the family," objected Lavender, looking confused.

"She's the regent or guardian or whatever," said Parvati, who was pureblood and vaguely aware of how the inheritance system worked. "Basically she gets to be in charge until Neville's of age, I think." She cocked her head as Neville nodded. "Wait, how come she's the regent and not your great-uncle?"

"Um," said Neville. "Because ... I think because she's more closely related to me?" He wasn't really sure how that rule worked, and suspected there might be a regent-candidate designation process involved, and probably a court decision, and possibly a lot of yelling. "Anyway. The Malfoys and the Smiths are both intact though - I think Zacharias might also be in our Herbology class, actually, isn't he?"

Seamus groaned audibly as Lavender and Parvati both nodded. "_Don't _ask him about his family," he said, "he'll talk for_ever_ about how he's descended from Helga Hufflepuff, the git."

"Are any of the other Noble Houses descended from Hogwarts founders?" asked Dean curiously.

"The historical consensus is 'yeah probably'," said Neville, shrugging, "because there's a bunch of really old records that suggest that all four Founders were part of the original Wizengamot, I think. But nobody's really sure which ones except the Smiths because they're obsessive about genealogy, and it's probably _not _the Blacks because I'm pretty sure there were Blacks when the Founders were alive ... Didn't that come up in History at the beginning of the year when they were talking about the Founders and how there was some giant war with a family that got wiped out and the Blacks were involved somehow?" He thought he might recall something like that.

"Yeah ... I think so?" said Lavender, who vaguely remembered Hermione chattering about it. "That's weird, what if, like, Susan Bones was descended from Godric Gryffindor and didn't know it? She's a _Hufflepuff, _that'd be so _weird _... "

Neville blinked. "Wow, yeah, that would be weird. Anyway, the Malfoys are _insanely _good at staying above the fray for some reason. But there actually _aren't _any Potters any more, the last ones died defeating You-Know-Who. You-Know-Who killed them, so they technically avenged _themselves_, which means nobody can jump the queue that way and I think Gringotts is supposed to be announcing a new family to be ennobled? Only it's been ten years and they haven't, so I'm not sure what's up with that, actually ... " He paused, frowning. He hadn't thought about that, but it seemed like someone ought to have. It wasn't totally clear how Gringotts decided when a family was formally extinct, but there was definitely some magic involved ... had someone managed to locate a distant relative and that was why?

"That's weird," said Ron, summing up the puzzlement in Neville's brain.

"Do you think the goblins know who's descended from the Founders?" wondered Parvati.

Neville shrugged helplessly. He was still wondering about the Potters. Wizarding families _did _intermarry all the time, it wasn't _totally _implausible that somewhere sufficiently far back on the family tree for someone to have forgotten about it there was a male Potter squib that hadn't been killed (because the Potters were exactly the sort of people not to disown their Squibs) and who'd had Muggle kids and then some number of generations later a Muggleborn with a different name had shown up in that line, and since _they _had magic they'd technically be eligible to inherit if the main branch all died ...

For a second Neville entertained the hilarious theory that Hermione Granger was the Potter heir, and then he compared her to a picture on the mantelpiece of his parents and James Potter all wearing Auror uniforms and looking terribly pleased with themselves, and noted that there was no family resemblance whatsoever. And then he decided that he was being completely ridiculous, and went back to his History of Magic work.

"Anyway, then the six remaining Noble Houses made a petition to the Wizengamot to make peace, and Binns said the Wizengamot actually took terms to the goblins that time instead of the other way around, so I think that's why they didn't try to institute the wand ban that time, and it didn't get passed until the next rebellion ... "


	24. Durmstrang

Hermione was still shocked that she'd gotten away with this, every time she thought about it. Headmaster Karkarov had visited her house in an impeccable Muggle suit, lied fluently to her parents, and whisked her away for the start of the spring term without so much as a single problem or hiccup. If she considered it really seriously, she began to wonder how on Earth she'd managed to get away with lying to such a clearly proficient liar. Maybe it was just because everyone assumed that twelve-year-old girls don't lie.

It also eventually occurred to Hermione to ask someone where they were. She had assumed, initially, that Durmstrang was in Germany, based on its language of instruction, but after a few weeks there she'd concluded that it wasn't this _cold _in Germany, even the northern parts. One of her more English-literate classmates, a boy from Iceland named Jarek, had laughed at this and told her they were in Norway, but as the school was Unplottable, no one knew where.

Hermione had asked why classes were taught in German, then. He had given her a look that said plainly _are you stupid_ and inquired dryly, "What, expecting English?"

Hermione had given up at that point and gone back to her homework. Only much later did she realize that Jarek's abrasive personality was universal, when it was pointed out to her with some amusement that it was unusual for him to talk to anyone _at all, _and that he'd been trying to be friendly.

But most of the time she didn't really have any spare moments to wonder about such things; because she was _busy_.

Durmstrang was smaller than Hogwarts, and so did not have Houses. The dormitories all surrounded one single common room (the warmest place in the castle), and the eating hall contained only one grand long table. Hermione shared her dormitory with two other third-year girls, both of whom were older and taller than her and neither of whom spoke much if any English. The first, Adriana, was dark and Romanian, and the other, Natasha, was red-haired and Russian, and they'd apparently been best friends since their first day of school. Surprisingly enough, this did not prevent them from being quite friendly to their new roommate. Living with them was not unpleasant, but very distracting; they seemed to think Hermione and her British accent were "adorable", and there was perhaps more squealing than Hermione might have liked.

Naturally, this meant she spent almost all of her time in the library, because she was trying to catch up properly to the third-year curriculum of a school she wasn't familiar with, all in a new language. Durmstrang had an entirely different set of courses to Hogwarts, as Hermione probably should have expected. Translated to English, her core classes were "Life Magic", "Battle Magic", "Brewmastery", and "History & Language", each of which had its own set of rules for behavior that she needed to learn by practice and observation.

Life Magic classes were supposed to teach every spell they would ever need in noncombat situations, which made it essentially a combination of Transfiguration and Charms classes at Hogwarts, and was very casual, with everyone practicing the assigned spell in pairs or small groups and the cheerful Swedish professor ambling around his messy classroom chattering at people in rapid, accented German. Hermione found this very stressful until her German improved to the point that she could understand most of it, and then after that Life Magic became one of her favorite classes.

Battle Magic was the other group of spells, the ones for fighting, and encompassed both the sort of things you might learn in a Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts class and also the sort of things you were supposed to be defending yourself from. In Battle Magic class, there was always a professional Healer on hand in addition to the stern professor, which confused Hermione until the first time she saw a classmate mispronounce a hex and accidentally rip his partner's wand arm clear off. (Hermione had had to shut her eyes and take deep breaths for several moments before being able to resume practicing herself.) She did not like Battle Magic _at all_, but did her best at it anyway, because if nothing else she desperately wanted to prove that she was just as good as all these pureblood supremacists she was surrounded by.

(Except, apparently, for a boy called Viktor Krum, who was fourteen, a year ahead of her. He had seemed oddly fascinated by her from the day she arrived, perhaps because she was the only person who seemed to spend more time in the library than he did. After a very awkward introduction during which they both made liberal use of Hermione's German/English dictionary, he'd taken to sharing her study table. Once they had enough common language to converse sensibly, he'd confided to her that he thought it was silly that Durmstrang didn't take Muggleborns, and she'd smiled brilliantly at him, agreed, and thenceforth decided that they were going to be friends.)

Hermione assumed Brewmastery would be Potions, but it turned out to also include a lot of what had at Hogwarts been Herbology. This was the class during which the students explored the extensive grounds, making use of their warm fur cloaks and occasionally having absurd cold-resistance contests. On these trips outside their Professor, an excitable sparrow-Animagus, was always fluttering about talking about all the different plants, how to care for them, and what sort of potions they could be used for, flickering between witch and bird like a faulty light-bulb. (Hermione took care not to use this analogy out loud, since she suspected it would mark her for Muggle-raised.)

History & Language was primarily a history class, but it was also the only class during which the professor, an elderly wizard who appeared to be a polyglot, would speak in any language other than German. Thrice a week was Talking Day, during which all the students in a class were supposed to try to speak to each other using only whatever language was assigned that day; this was mostly to encourage the students to be able to communicate with one another. There were students whose mother tongues were German, French, Italian, and almost every Slavic and Scandinavian language there was, and although all the students had at least basic proficiency in German, it helped everyone to know how the others worked.

This explained why Hermione kept hearing the sixth- and seventh-year students having bafflingly multilingual conversations in which they would, apparently, mix languages like soup ingredients without really noticing, although it did not entirely help her - or any of the other students below fourth year, in fact - understand anything they were saying. She enjoyed Talking Days, though, difficult as they were; cultural differences were a subject she was genuinely fascinated by, and she always felt like she was learning new things. As a bonus, watching Jarek and Natasha try to have arguments in a language neither of them knew - such as Italian - was invariably hilarious.

There were also electives, which Hermione naturally signed up for every single one of: Transportation (flying brooms and carpets, later to include Portkeys and Apparition), Mathematics (Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and quite a bit of genuine Muggle mathematics, to Hermione's surprise), Literature (which as far as she could tell had no equivalent at Hogwarts), and Astronomy (which also included some centaur-derived Divination).

Hermione was _extraordinarily _busy, working every spare second to make sure she wasn't missing anything and in order to quickly earn her right to be called the best student in her class -

- but she _did _eat, and sleep, because Viktor would tug gently on her sleeve and remind her, or Jarek would contrive to slip sleeping powder into her tea, and Hermione decided that all the lies and the hard work and the freezing cold were worth it. She began to feel comfortable in the world of Durmstrang Institute. And so she began not to notice the faint little alarm bell ringing in the back of her head when her classmates giggled over the dismembered pieces of a bear, or when someone made an offhand joke about Muggle-hunting. She didn't _want_ to notice, not when throwing a fit might make Jarek decide she wasn't worth his time or make Viktor stop helping her study.

She really _liked _having friends.


	25. Death & Statistics

Professor Vector was bored.

Consequently, she was sitting in the staffroom making graphs with McGonagall's school census data, because she'd run out of student work to grade and all of her tests had been written years ago. McGonagall had only basic data, number of students in each House for every year and their gender and blood status, but from that she had been able to pull a remarkable amount of interesting information. Professor Snape, looking mildly amused, was sitting at the staff table drinking black tea, grading essays, and intermittently making sarcastic comments. (Septima Vector had been a Slytherin, and she and the Slytherin Head of House got along reasonably well.)

"That's odd," said Vector, peering at the sketch she'd just made of the number of Muggleborns in any given incoming class graphed on the same scale as the total number of incoming students. She'd been expecting a correlation, from which she might deduce the average number of Muggleborns over a large span of time, but the two curves did not seem to vary especially dependently. She'd tried putting in vertical dotted lines for the beginning and end of the War, and after some consideration also the previous European war.

"What?" inquired Snape curiously.

"You'd figure that the number of Muggleborns as a fraction of total population would drop significantly at, give or take, an eleven year interval from when wars were going on, right?"

Snape nodded cautiously.

"Well, they don't," she said. "For one thing, Grindelwald's war doesn't appear to have affected the Muggleborn rate at _all._"

"I can explain that one," said McGonagall, who had been alive and an adult during that war, from the vicinity of the teakettle. "Gellert Grindelwald did _not _discriminate against Muggleborn witches and wizards the way You-Know-Who did. As far as he was concerned, anyone with magic was part of the superior race." She shook her head, looking a bit sad. "If you could measure the number of Squibs in the world, I think you'd find that _they _were the ones who were most victimized in that war, especially since unlike Muggleborns, they cannot defend themselves against magic with any effectiveness."

"Ah," said Vector, who had been too young to know this. "Okay, well, that explains that. But the war here was certainly all about blood status. And look at this." She frowned at her graphs. "In sixty-five, that's when the war started according to the history books, we had what is probably a 'normal' rate of Muggle-borns - about eighteen percent - coming into Hogwarts as first-years. The graduation rate that year was normal. About six years later, there's a sharp drop in the percentage, down to more like four percent. It decreases slowly thereafter. Around sixty-nine the _total _population starts to fall ... so by seventy-two it's still around the same percentage but it's only one person in thirty-five first years, Lily Evans was the _only _Muggleborn Sorted that year."

She ignored Snape's involuntary eye-twitch at the name. She'd been three years behind him in school, and like most people who'd observed the falling-out between Lily and Severus at the time, had decided at the time that she really just didn't want to know.

"And then," Vector continues, "the student population steadily decreases, and it's hard to get a statistically significant average percent because there was still about one Muggleborn per year, until eighty-five, that's about six years after the war ended. The total population of wizardborn stayed at about the same rate but there was a really abrupt jump in Muggleborn population, which brought up the percentage really sharply, close to about fifty percent - that's six years ago and you'll notice that well over half of our upper-year students, except the Slytherins, are Muggleborn."

McGonagall nodded; she had noticed that. Gryffindor was extremely underpopulated as of late, thanks to the number of Gryffindor families who'd been murdered during the war (_James Lily Frank Alice Peter Marlene)_, but it was still noticeable: of her six seventh-years, _five _were Muggleborn.

Vector frowned at her notes. "And then the percentage decreases slowly from there. But that doesn't make sense. Shouldn't that have happened _eleven _years after the end of the war? We're only starting to see the population uptick now, the first-years this year were a year or two old when the war ended." The endpoints were Hermione Granger (who would have been twenty-five months old when the Potters killed Voldemort) and Neville Longbottom (who would have been about fifteen months). So ... "Kids born _after _the war ended would be the ones born starting in November of 1981, those kids will be eleven _next _November, we won't see them until the year after next. So why the Muggleborns? Shouldn't that be the case everywhere?"

Snape shook his head slowly. "No, I see it," he said. "Unlike Squibs, Muggleborns are _non-obvious _until they start showing accidental magic. That's around five or six, I think, isn't it, Minerva?"

McGonagall considered, and then nodded. "Yes, I believe so."

The Potions master spoke clinically; only those who knew him _very _well would have noticed that he was faintly uncomfortable talking about the massacre of children. "The Death Eaters would not have killed any Muggleborns younger than five, then," he said, "and so it is _those _children you saw begin to arrive six years ago, the ones who were alive at the end of the war but too young to be noticed."

"Ah," said Professor Vector, still frowning at her graphs. "And since _their _parents were only random Muggles, they were not as statistically likely to be killed just for having parents who disagreed with the Death Eaters than any given wizarding family."

Snape nodded. "And _wizarding _children would not be left alive for being younger than five," he said grimly, "which is why you didn't see the wizarding population go up again until now."

"Ah," said Vector again, looking uncomfortable. Then she said, stacking up the papers and setting them definitively to the side, "I think I am going to graph something that _doesn't_ make me think about my former classmates murdering children."

"Excellent choice," said Snape wryly, and went back to his grading, satisfied in the reminder that not _all _Slytherins were like the Death Eaters.


	26. Norbert

The first-year Gryffindors had laid claim to a corner table in the library, which was far enough out of the way that they hadn't been kicked out of it by older students because no one else wanted it. It was surrounded by empty tables and dusty shelves, and far enough from Madam Pince's desk that they wouldn't be yelled at for talking, but had taken them some time to find and get into the habit of sitting at, because this was Hogwarts, and it was entirely possible to actually get _lost _in the library between the entrance and this far back.

(They still hadn't figured out how to get from their table to the Restricted Section, and Seamus had at one point suggested that maybe you simply couldn't find the Restricted Section at all unless you had a signed note that said you could go there. Ron had pointed out that he was fairly certain Fred and George snuck back there all the time without notes, but as the twins did not make a habit of sharing their methods, he had no idea _how_ they got into the Restricted Section and no illusions that they would tell him where to find it.)

It was to this table that Parvati returned, carrying a book on minor magical pests that they needed for Quirrell's assigned essay, which was due soon. They had been practicing simple jinxes all year (Lavender had even hit Malfoy with one in the corridor while the blond Slytherin was taking aim at Neville, and ducked his rejoinder rather adroitly, to general applause), and were supposed to be writing about the 'appropriate' uses of these spells. Since everyone had just been using them to annoy their House rivals, they had been obliged to consult the library on what you were _actually _supposed to use Jelly-legs and Leg-locker Jinxes for.

Parvati sat down with the book, however, and did not open it. Instead she said, her eyes wide with curiosity, "I just saw _Hagrid!_"

Since they all had been in the library nearly every day since the start of term, it was immediately clear to everyone why this was news. Rubeus Hagrid, the gamekeeper, simply _didn't _go to the library; they'd never seen him, and given his size, it would have been extremely obvious if he had been there. Lavender said, confused, "What's he doing here?"

"Dunno for sure," said Parvati, leaning forward as if to share a secret, "but he was looking at books about _dragons!_" And, she further explained, not the sort of books you would want if you were planning on trying to get _rid _of dragons, or _protect _yourself from dragons; they were the sort of old books that nobody published anymore, about what you would do if you wanted to _raise _a dragon, like as a _pet_.

"Who would want a _dragon _for a pet?" said Seamus, sounding a little horrified.

Ron and Neville exchanged faintly worried glances and said, almost at the exact same time, "Hagrid would."

* * *

><p>Perhaps predictably, it was Ron and Neville who were elected to go find out what Hagrid was doing and, if it were illegal, stop him from doing it. As both their parents, and Ron's second-eldest brother, had been good friends of Hagrid's, they occasionally went down to the gamekeepers' hut for tea and tooth-breaking biscuits and interesting stories about their parents' childhoods. Since none of the other first-years did this on a regular basis, Ron and Neville were the ones who got to ask Hagrid awkward questions.<p>

It was spring, and warm, and Neville's expression got steadily more nervous as they approached the hut and saw that there was smoke spiraling out of the chimney, and all of the blind were shut. "Surely," he said, swallowing, "_surely _he hasn't _actually _got - "

* * *

><p>"Hagrid, you live in a <em>wooden house <em>- "

* * *

><p><em>Charlie, <em>

_We've just found out that Hagrid's got a baby dragon, and he hasn't got a permit or anything, he just bought the egg off some bloke in a pub. And we figured he could probably handle it at first ... But we think Draco Malfoy found out, and we really don't want Hagrid to get arrested, and is there anything you can do to help? It's about a week old now and he's named it Norbert and I don't know how old dragons have to get before they start breathing fire but Hagrid's hut is really flammable and we're worried ... _

_Ron_

* * *

><p><em>Ron<em>,

_Tell Hagrid he absolutely needs to get rid of the hatchling before he's reported to the Ministry! Lucius Malfoy could get him sent to Azkaban in a heartbeat. We can handle it here, that's probably the best plan, the reserve's actually got a pretty stable system for faking registration for dragons rescued from illegal breeders, that sort of thing happens all the time. Not my department, but I can send down a couple of my friends who're familiar with the area. I've put it on the schedule as early as we could fit it in; get Norbert to the top of the Astronomy tower at midnight a week from Sunday and they'll pick him up._

_And apologize to Hagrid for me, I know he's always wanted a dragon, but that's really just insurmountably dangerous. Tell him to write me if he wants to come visit, we can arrange that with enough warning. _

_Charlie _

* * *

><p>Ron was sitting at the breakfast table when he read this, and had the amazingly awkward timing to be within reach of Percy.<p>

"Writing to Charlie?" his brother inquired curiously, recognizing the owl that had delivered the message to be their dragon-taming brother's Great Gray, Alric. "What for?"

Ron said, "Um, no reason," and quickly stuffed the letter out of sight. The look of disappointment that flashed across Percy's face, however, made Ron feel as if he'd just stabbed his brother with a carving knife. _Oh_, it said, _you don't really want me in your life, do you, you just want me to help you with your homework. Ouch, little brother, that hurts. _Ron, who had only a few months ago resolved _not _to do that sort of thing, added hastily and with not a little guilt in his voice, "I'll tell you later, okay?"

He kept his word; later that evening, he told Percy all about Hagrid's dragon egg, about Norbert, and about the resulting dilemma. He and Neville, even with help from the others, had not been able to figure out how to get to the top of the Astronomy tower at midnight on a Sunday without getting caught by Filch halfway and getting in amazingly huge amounts of trouble, especially given the constraint that they were going to need to do it while transporting a crate approximately the size and weight of Neville.

Percy stared at him for an entire minute.

Then he smiled, and said, "Did you know that prefects are allowed out past curfew?"

* * *

><p>Ron learned the hard way that Norbert's bite was poisonous. Afraid of getting Hagrid in trouble, he wrapped his hand in a handkerchief and tried to pretend that nothing was wrong, but eventually that became untenable. The stubborn redhead had to be dragged to the hospital wing by a faintly exasperated Parvati, after his hand swelled to more than twice its normal size and turned a nasty shade of greenish purple.<p>

Percy told the others in no uncertain terms that they were absolutely not to involve themselves in the transportation of Norbert. "This is _not _a Gryffindor adventure," he said flatly to the five first-years gathered around Ron's hospital bed the evening of May 9th, the day before Charlie's friends were scheduled to arrive. His voice was stern, and nearly reminiscent of McGonagall.

"But - " began Lavender. _We're Gryffindors, aren't we? _

"Gryffindor adventures get people hurt," said Percy flatly, and everyone - thinking of Halloween - winced. "There is to be no heroic rule-breaking, no last-minute emergencies that you must handle. If anything goes wrong, it is _not _your job to fix it." He gave an especially pointed look here to Ron, with whom he was still somewhat annoyed for getting himself bitten by the dragon he wasn't even supposed to be dealing with. Percy said, making clear eye contact with every single one of the kids, "You _will not _leave the Tower even if you hear from some older student that there is a dragon loose on the grounds, or that Hagrid's hut is on fire, or any other absurd problem that I cannot currently think of. If anything happens, _I _will handle it, because I am not breaking any rules." This was technically true; Percy was not actually going to break any Hogwarts rules.

(It tells you a lot about what Percy had learned from his older brothers that, while he would have rejected out of hand any plan that involved breaking school rules, it had not fazed him at all that he was going to be breaking several _laws_.)

He added, "and if one of you gets yourself in trouble by behaving like a stupid bloody Gryffindor, as soon as I get back, I will hang you from the top of the Great Hall by your shoelaces, _is that clear?_"

Six terrified nods told him that it was.

* * *

><p>Given more than a week's warning, Percy had been able to get himself scheduled for prefect patrol duty on the night Charlie's friends were due to arrive.<p>

At ten-thirty on the evening of May 10th, Percy Weasley walked casually out onto the grounds and to the gamekeeper's wooden hut, with his prefect's badge pinned carefully to his robes and wearing no cloak. He had heard far too many of Charlie's stories about cloaks getting set on fire, or caught in talons, or tripped over, to wear one in the presence of a dragon, even a very small dragon ... although, admittedly, the fact that the twins had recently charmed his cloak to play music whenever caught by the wind, a jinx he'd yet to get around to figuring out how to reverse, had probably influenced his decision as well.

Knock-knock-knock.

The door opened slightly, and Hagrid peered out suspiciously. When he saw who it was, he opened the door properly, and ushered Percy in. Percy could see that the enormous man was upset; he kept dabbing at his red eyes with a handkerchief the size of a tablecloth, and making half-hearted attempts to stall as he wrestled Norbert into a crate. Percy kept an eye on his watch and an eye on the door, and waited, wishing he had any idea how to be usefully sympathetic.

Once Norbert - now the size of a dog - had been packed into the crate with blankets and pillows and a teddy bear he had immediately shredded, Percy gave Hagrid five more minutes to be sentimental ("_'E's gonna miss his mummy!"_) and then, glancing regretfully at his watch, said, "It's a quarter after eleven, Hagrid, I've got to get him up to the tower now." Hagrid nodded tearfully, waving at the little dragon through the slats of the crate, and Percy wished yet again that he had any idea how to make sad people feel better. "_Locomotor Norbert!_" he said, pointing his wand at the crate, and it lifted gently into the air.

Halfway back to the front door, the growling and tearing sound of Norbert disassembling his pillows motivated Percy to add a Silencing charm, which made it easier not to think about the fact that he was carrying a very illegal baby dragon. Still, it was a nerve-wracking climb up the front steps, up the marble staircase, around the west wing, and up the steps of the Astronomy Tower.

Thankfully, he made it to the top without incident; simply flashing his Prefect badge at Mrs. Norris made her scamper away with a disappointed hiss, and he did not see Filch. (Though he _did _have an explanation prepared for the eventuality: He was delivering telescopes to Professor Sinistra, and could probably back up that assertion by reaching into the crate and Transfiguring a pillow into a telescope to show the caretaker. It was for this reason that he was wearing his dragonhide gloves.)

At a quarter to midnight he shut the trapdoor to the open-air top of the Astronomy Tower, and took a deep breath of the cool night air, feeling vaguely surprised that nothing horrible had happened yet.

Charlie's friends turned up precisely at midnight on broomsticks, dressed all in battered black leather and looking vaguely familiar. They inexplicably managed to land on the tower, all in a flurry of air and loose hanging straps and ruffled hair, without making a single noise, but then immediately ruined the effect by greeting Percy with cheery disregard for the lateness of the hour. "Mornin', li'l Ginger," trilled their leader, a shaggy brown-haired wizard with a friendly Scottish accent who was several inches shorter than Percy and seemed to thrum with energy. One of the others gave him a sardonic look. "Or, eh, evenin', I guess, whichever," he added with a shrug.

"Er, yes," said Percy, who had skittered several steps back to let the half-dozen broomsticks land, "hello. You're here for, ah, Norbert?" He indicated the crate, which was shaking slightly now that it had been let down to the ground again.

Several people nodded brightly and got to work, and it became obvious that the various loose buckled straps hanging from various broomsticks were in fact the pieces of a harnessing rig. They'd come prepared. "Thanks for the box," said a dark Spanish wizard appreciatively, "we came prepared for a loose dragon, but this is way easier."

"You're welcome," said Percy automatically, and then when someone asked what breed of dragon they had in the aforementioned box, he had to think. "I didn't get a good look at it," he admitted, "not in any kind of light. I think Ron said it was a Norwegian Ridgeback."

The Scottish wizard whistled. "Damn rare, these buggers. Where'd ya get hold of him?"

"I didn't," said Percy quickly, "I'm just the messenger."

This answer was accepted with a shrug, and soon Norbert was vanishing into the clouds, his crate strapped firmly to the dragon keepers' broomsticks. Once he had vanished from sight, Percy let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. The dragon was gone; everything was fine.

He paced the halls for another hour, until the end of his shift, during which time he mostly gently straightened portraits, as no one seemed to be awake. That was nice; sometimes he had to chase people out of broom closets, which was never fun for anyone involved.

He reported to Professor Sinistra, who was sitting in her office grading essays, that his patrol shift had been uneventful, and then headed back down the steps.

To his disappointment, this was not quitethe end of the excitement for the day.

* * *

><p>Halfway across the first floor, heading for the staircase, Percy ran into Professor McGonagall, who was dragging Draco Malfoy by the ear. "Oh," he said in complete surprise, his voice squeaking slightly with nerves, "hello, Professor." McGonagall wasn't usually awake at this hour; night patrol duty fell to the prefects, and they reported to Sinistra rather than to their Heads of House, since the Astronomy professor was always up at night. Usually no one woke up any of the other professors unless something came up that required further authority.<p>

"Mr. Weasley," said the Gryffindor Head of House, looking faintly surprised.

"See!" squealed Malfoy, "see, he _is _up past curfew - "

"I am a _prefect_, unlike you, Mr. Malfoy," said Percy rather sharply, eyes narrowing. "Professor, did he wake you up?"

McGonagall nodded. "Mr. Malfoy _insists_," she said with a sigh, "that there is, and I quote, a _Weasley conspiracy _to smuggle a _dragon _out of the school tonight." She shot the Slytherin a disapproving look. "I was just returning him to his common room. How was your patrol?"

"Pleasantly uneventful, Professor," said Percy as sincerely as possible. He was enormously glad for the fact that his gloves were now safely in his robe pockets. "I certainly haven't seen any dragons."

"But I _saw _- " began Malfoy unhappily.

A great deal of Percy's attention was focused on doing his level best to look as incredulous as possible at the idea that he and any of his brothers might be conspiring to transport a dragon out of the school, but this still managed to annoy him. "With all due respect, Mr. Malfoy," he said frostily, "this is _Hogwarts_. If you saw a poltergeist pretending to be a dragon, I don't believe that gives you the right to be out past curfew." Malfoy subsided, seething, and Percy addressed McGonagall politely. "My patrol's over. Can I do anything for you before I go to bed, Professor?"

"I can handle this, thank you, Mr. Weasley," said McGonagall, and Percy nodded and headed up the steps, trying not to betray his relief.

When he returned to the common room, he found that Neville Longbottom was waiting up for him, looking sleepy and nervous. He jumped to his feet the second he saw Percy, and said a stream of mostly-incoherent words, the relevant bits of which were "Malfoy" and "reporting to McGonagall" and "huge trouble", and Percy sighed and patted the kid on the shoulder, pushing him gently towards the staircase to the dorms.

"Everything is fine, Neville," he said. And then he added, pointedly, "but everything would _not _be fine if you had left the Tower to try to warn me, because McGonagall would have caught you instead of just catching Malfoy, and then the both of you would be in trouble." He smiled a little at the understanding that bloomed across Neville's nervous face then. "See? That is why I told you all to stay put," he explained. "Sometimes problems are much better solved with _sense _than with Gryffindoring." And off Neville went up the stairs, and Percy headed to his own bed, yawning, and feeling as if he'd actually managed to teach a valuable lesson.

(Percy was faintly surprised to notice that he really _liked _that feeling.)


	27. This Is A Horrible Idea

In a corner of the Gryffindor common room, the Weasley twins sat huddled together over several pieces of parchment, quills in hand. They kept writing over each other, somehow not so much as knocking elbows in the process. Lee Jordan, from where he was sitting several tables away playing Exploding Snap with Angelina Johnson and Alicia Spinnet, kept casting them faintly concerned looks. If Percy had known what his brothers were doing, he would have shouted at them until their ears shriveled away to nothingness; but one of the things that they had learned from the Marauders and their inimitable Map was how to make things on parchment look entirely different from what they were. To Percy, it just looked like they were finally doing their homework; and so he left them alone.

It should, perhaps, go without saying that they were not doing their homework at all.

They were trying to figure out, as the top of the page indicated in block capitals, **WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS UP WITH QUIRRELL?**, and were in the process of writing down everything they had so far in hopes that putting it all down together would help them think of an explanation.

_observations_  
><em>- Quirrell is the one who yelled about the troll on Halloween;; it was decidedly NOT in the dungeons<em>  
><em>- Defense professor who can't fight trolls? <em>  
><em>- Quirrell and Snape were both in the forbidden third floor corridor while Percy was troll-fighting (according to Map)<em>  
><em>- Snape was limping for weeks after Halloween;<em>  
><em>- Snape and Quirrell DEFINITELY DO NOT GET ALONG<em>  
><em>- Quirinus Quirrell = Tom Riddle on the Map (twice now) <em>  
><em>- Tom Riddle was a Slytherin prefect, and Head Boy in 1943 (got an Award for Special Services to the School;; NO IDEA WHAT FOR) <em>  
><em>- Percy says Quirrell didn't used to stutter back when he taught Muggle Studies two years ago (everybody says vampires?)<em>  
><em>- sabbatical supposedly to Albania (there aren't actually vampires in Albania) <em>  
><em>- Ron says he saw a "monster" killing unicorns (shot by Hagrid), same day as first Map thing<em>  
><em>- Quirrell was "ill" the next day, Snape covered his classes, but he wasn't in the hospital wing, he was in his office<em>  
><em>- Hagrid says the centaurs didn't find the monster he shot<em>  
><em>- Quirrell never takes off that turban (full of garlic  full of something else covered by garlic?)_

_conclusions_  
><em>- Quirrell is not really Quirrell, he's this Tom Riddle guy pretending (but why?) (so is real Quirrell dead?) <em>  
><em>- QuirrellRiddle tried to kill Ron (and Malfoy?)_  
><em>- QuirrellRiddle is drinking unicorn blood (keeps you alive, supposed to be cursed) _  
><em>- QuirrellRiddle/Snape/both are trying to break into the forbidden third floor for whatever's past that dog_  
><em>- there was a fight on Halloween<em>

_theories_  
><em>- QuirrellRiddle is a vampire? (anti-vampire? he's clearly not affected by the garlic) _  
><em>- QuirrellRiddle is dead or dying_  
><em>- Snape summoned the troll and Quirrell tried to get other people involved 'cause he sucks at fighting trolls? <em>  
><em>- there's something in the third floor better than unicorn blood<em>  
><em>-QR has a grudge against Malfoy for some reason? maybe related to not getting along with Snape?_  
><em>- Snape is trying to get at it? he knows how to make the relevant potion, maybe? <em>  
><em>- why aren't they working together if they have the same goal? <em>  
><em>- is there only one dose? what would Snape want with it anyway? (is Snape dying too?)<em>  
><em>- ARE they working together (Snape covering classes, both on third floor Halloween ... ) and just faking?<em>

_to do:_  
><em>- look up vampire-like things that aren't vampires<em>  
><em>- what EXACTLY does unicorn blood do? <em>  
><em>- what else could reproduce that effect? <em>  
><em>- ASK MCGONAGALL ABOUT SNAPE &amp; THE THIRD FLOOR<em>

Percy continued not to notice what they were up to, as the days passed. They made a point of intermittently really doing their homework, so that it wouldn't seem bizarre that they were spending so much time in the library recently. McGonagall actually looked vaguely approving when they came to talk to her, saying, "I am very pleased that you have been doing your work more consistently as of late," which was quite nice, for all that it vanished at once as soon as they asked her their question. Then at once the usual stern look was back, and along with it their Head of House's disapproval in full force. "Professor Snape is a respected member of our faculty, as is Professor Quirrell," she said sharply, "and I will not hear such baseless accusations from my students. At any rate, the third-floor corridor is perfectly well-protected, and for that matter none of your business!"

_observations:_

_- McGonagall dismissed us HARD, probably no one will listen to us because we're us _  
><em>- she did use the word "protected" which means there IS something to protect, the dog's a guardian <em>  
><em>- vampires don't drink unicorn blood, they'd get sick and probably die, so he's not a vampire<em>  
><em>- otherwise it's basically anti-death magic but cursed (you'd have to be really evil!) <em>  
><em>- general non-cursed anti-death magic: nothing came up but the Philosopher's Stone, of which there's only one<em>

_conclusions: _

_?_

_to do:_  
><em>- see if there's more unicorns dying<em>

It occurred to them later (much, much later) that the sensible thing to do would have just been to go ask Hagrid; but they were Fred and George Weasley. That is not what they did.

What they did was sneak out of the castle on Thursday night, the day before the Quidditch game, and go into the Forbidden Forest.


	28. Spiders Are Scary

The idea, of course, was to try and find out if the unicorns were still being hunted, and if so, by what. Whatever Quirrell (Riddle?) was, he'd taken one of Hagrid's crossbow bolts to the chest and lived (?) to tell the tale, but unless they could catch him red-handed, none of the other professors were likely to believe them. If Snape was working with Quirrell, he'd no doubt lie and get them in trouble, and if Snape _wasn't _working with Quirrell, he probably still wouldn't be any help, because this was Snape they were talking about. Which meant it was, in a _best _case scenario, their word against one of their professors, and somehow the twins sincerely doubted that that was a conversation with the Headmaster that would go anything resembling well.

So they needed proof.

Therefore they needed to find the unicorns, or some evidence of what had happened to them, in order to form a coherent accusation that they could take to Dumbledore. Right now all they had was "probably Quirrell is evil?" and despite all the circumstantial evidence they had, they still weren't sure what evil thing he was even _doing_. Killing unicorns, however, counted as evil all by itself, so that would be a good place to start, in theory.

The flaw in the plan, of course, was that the forest was rather _large_.

They had been wandering through the forest for about an hour, absently wondering whether Percy would even be able to contain the amount of annoyance required to respond properly to this level of irresponsibility or if he would just explode, when the faint sound of clicking made both the twins freeze in place. They'd eschewed lights in hopes that letting their eyes adjust would allow them to see better, but it was unfortunately quite a bit darker than they'd expected, and although they _had _adjusted they still couldn't actually see very well. All either could see were great black masses shifting in the trees, which they had previously assumed were the trees moving. It was beginning to be obvious, however, that there was something _in_ the trees. Something very large, and something that was probably _not _a unicorn.

_Something _dropped into the path in front of them. Eight feet of black hairy something, to be specific, clicking ominously.

Fred said, "_Lumos!_", giving George light by which to aim. George obliged with "_Tarantallegra!_" and hit a giant spider right in the middle of its eight eyes. It did not even flinch. By the light of Fred's wand, they saw clearly that they were surrounded by enormous spiders, black and hairy and fanged, and evidently rather resistant to jinxes. They were thirteen and did not know any more dangerous magic than jinxes, which meant that they were not well-equipped to defend themselves with any effectiveness from this hazard.

It was at this point, finally, that they realized how amazingly stupid they were being.

(Then they ran for their lives.)

* * *

><p>Ron and Neville were going over their Charms homework, ostensibly with Percy's help. More accurately, what was happening was that they asked questions mostly to each other, and Percy intermittently interrupted his ongoing panic attack to answer them. Neville had asked at one point, quietly, if they shouldn't maybe leave Percy alone, and Ron had grinned and said, equally quietly, "I think it calms him down, actually," which was completely true, if non-obvious to non-Weasleys. Neville certainly hadn't noticed any appreciable difference in the level of tension that Percy (twitchy and surrounded by parchment) radiated, but he supposed Ron probably knew best.<p>

Even Percy looked up and inhaled sharply, however, when Fred and George tumbled through the portrait hole and sort of half-ran, half-stumbled over to Ron.

"We are - "

" - so sorry - "

" - about the spider - "

" - when you were five - "

" - that was awful - "

" - _so sorry _- "

" - never again - "

" - never ever - "

" - spiders are _scary!_"

After this torrent of words, the twins bolted up the stairs to their dormitory, and the sound of a door slamming could be heard in the distance. Ron stared at the stairs, looking confused and slightly alarmed.

"That was weird," observed Neville.

Percy, his expression faintly puzzled, agreed, "I feel the distinct sense that I should be yelling at them for something."

"Well, _that's_ normal, at least," said Ron.

* * *

><p>The next day at breakfast the twins gave Ron a giant bar of Honeydukes' finest chocolate and apologized several more times, before they ran off again, without pausing to actually eat any breakfast or even sit down at the table. Dean tilted his head at Ron as the redhead blinked at the belated gift in his hand, which was quite possibly the first thing the twins had ever given him without condition, ever. "What, did they kill your rat or something?" Dean asked.<p>

"Er ... no," said Ron, patting the pocket where Scabbers was slumbering peacefully, quite unharmed. He considered, and tried to recall the flurry of apologetic words from the previous evening. After a moment he offered, "Apparently it's got something to do with the fact that they turned my teddy bear into a giant spider when I was five?" Everyone winced at the mental image. Ron snapped a section off the chocolate bar and shrugged dismissively. "If I get free candy out of the deal," he said, taking a bite, "I am not going to ask questions."

"Fair enough," said Dean amiably, "can I have a piece?"

* * *

><p>It took the twins several days to regain anything resembling an ordinary level of calmness, after which time they managed to have a basically coherent discussion about what had happened. Clearly they should not have gone into the forest so inadequately prepared. No wonder it was Forbidden to students with a capital F. So, they maybe needed a different approach to the problem ...<p>

... also, they were never, ever going to make fun of anyone for being afraid of spiders _ever again_.


	29. Plot-Induced Sleep Deprivation

The twins spent most of Friday evening in brightly-lit Honeydukes, trying to dispel their lingering fear from their jaunt into the Forest the previous night. They returned rather late to find the common room quite sparsely occupied, though not entirely empty. Even the NEWT students had left. Amelia Fawcett, the only one of the six who wasn't Muggleborn, didn't have any idea how to do anything nonmagical, and as such expected not to be able to function in real life without decent NEWT scores; she had been panicking for weeks, but her classmates had eventually dragged her upstairs and made her go to sleep. There were, after all, two entire days until the exams started. Two people were still awake, however: Percy Weasley and Oliver Wood, firmly ensconced in a corner table studying.

"What're you two doing still up?" said Fred curiously as he spotted them. They had books open and parchment everywhere, and clearly hadn't moved for hours.

Percy looked up, and blinked a few times to focus on his brothers. "Neither of us can sleep because Oliver keeps pacing around muttering to himself," he explained. "So I figured we might as well do something productive. What are _you _doing up?" He considered the twins curiously, and then added, "are you _okay_? You seemed ... " How to describe the twins' odd behavior that morning and the previous evening? " ... stressed, earlier."

There was a distinct pause.

Percy recognized the look that passed between Fred and George. It was _identical _to the expression Ron had been wearing earlier that year, when he decided not to tell Percy about Norbert, and then changed his mind. So he waited politely, and tried not to look forbidding, and sure enough, a moment later the twins joined them at the table. Without preamble, George said, "Professor Quirrell's dead or dying and eating unicorns to stay alive, and we think there's something hidden on the forbidden third floor that he wants and is willing to break into Gringotts and possibly kill people to get."

There was another, slightly longer pause.

Oliver said, "_What_?", and Percy said, as calmly as possible, "You're going to need to explain that."

So Fred pulled out his charmed parchment with all their observations and conclusions and questions, and handed it to his brother. At the bottom, '_find out if more unicorns are dying_' had been scratched out and under it written, '_SPIDERS ARE SCARY!_', which was not especially illuminating.

Percy read the entire page, paled several shades, and then spun it around for Oliver to read. As he could read (albeit slowly) upside-down, he could still point at relevant things on the page as he spoke. This he did, as he said, "First question: What dog?"

The twins answered in their usual fragmented fashion, taking turns every half a sentence without even pausing in between, like tossing a conversational Quaffle back and forth. Percy had always wondered if they even knew they were doing it. "Well, see, we thought Dumbledore was kidding" - "when he said that stuff at the feast" - "about dying a horrible death and so on" - "so we went to go find out what's on the third floor" - "in the middle of the night of course" - "and it's not even warded" - "just a _colloportus, _that was it" - "got through it easy" - "there's a trapdoor" - "with a big three-headed dog standing on it."

There was a pause for Percy to absorb this, and then his voice rose about an octave as he said, "_There's a Cerberus inside Hogwarts?_"

"A what?" said Fred, George, and Oliver all at once.

"Cerberus, three-headed dog," said Percy distractedly, "they're guard dogs, it's a big export from Greece, they're really hard to get hold of, _what in the name of all and good and holy is it doing in a school?_"

The twins exchanged a look. "You just said it yourself" - "guarding something."

Percy looked back at the paper. "And you think this something is a Philosopher's Stone," he observed. "If it even existed there's no reason for it to be _here_, though - "

"Why shouldn't it exist?" said Oliver. "You just told me three-headed dogs are real." He had not been previously aware of this, due to his choice in electives failing to include Care of Magical Creatures. He'd picked Divination and Ancient Runes on the guess that neither was likely to be dangerous. (Charlie Weasley had once been an hour late for Quidditch practice due to having his hand shattered in Care of Magical Creatures class, and this had rather soured Oliver on the subject.) "Dragons are real, unicorns are real, ghosts are real, flying broomsticks are real, elves are real, universal antitoxins are real - "

"Huh?" said Fred, and Percy supplied entirely without thinking about it, "Bezoars," and George said, "Oh."

" - basically everything my parents ever told me was imaginary as a child is real," finished Oliver, who was Muggle-born. "Why _shouldn't _the Philosopher's Stone be real, too?"

"Santa Claus isn't real," said Percy, who had taken Muggle Studies. (And Arithmancy and Care of Magical Creatures and Ancient Runes; thankfully, due to the small size of his class year, none of them had overlapped.) He ignored the look of mild disappointment on Oliver's face and continued, "and it's just ridiculous, one thing that makes you rich _and _immortal, it's _clearly _wishful thinking. And besides, there's things magic can't do; immortality is definitely one of them - "

"Hold that thought," said Fred. The twins had just, as one motion, got up from the table. George added, "We'll be back." And then, before Percy could resume his rant or ask where they were going, they were out through the portrait hole.

"We should really just lock that after curfew," said Percy idly, and went back to his Transfiguration book. Once he'd become a prefect he'd tried a number of times to chase down his brothers when they left the common room past curfew, and it had always failed. He always ended up lost and nowhere near them. Eventually, he'd given it up as a lost cause, and at this point didn't even consider it worth the time to bother trying.

The twins returned a while later, with a book. When it was set on the table, Percy could see that it was entitled _Alchemists of Great Britain, _and he recognized it as one of a set of books by the same historian which catalogued all of the significant figures of wizarding Britain from the beginning of recorded history. _Alchemists _was one of the ones he hadn't read, although he had on occasion skimmed _Arithmancers _and _Political Leaders, _respectively for class and out of personal curiosity.

In short order George had flipped to the F's and handed Percy the book, pointing at the relevant entry. Sighing, Percy looked down and read.

_Nicolas Flamel (1326 - present) _

_Only known maker of the fabled Philosopher's Stone, which turns lead into gold and produces the Elixir of Life. Has published a total of 548 separate papers on alchemical research topics, the most recent of which is a collaboration 'On the Uses of Dragons' Blood' with Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Although there are persistent rumours that the fire-lily, a plant invented by Flamel's wife Perenelle, is an ingredient, the recipe for the Stone has to this day never been published. _

Percy stared at this for an entire minute. Then he read it again. Then he sighed. "Conceded," he said. "The world is so _strange_."

The twins, who had made it their life goal to make the world as strange as possible at all times, snickered. Oliver, however, stared at his friend incredulously. "You've only _just now _noticed that?"

Percy grumbled faintly and picked up the twins' parchment again (creatively titled, he noticed, 'What the bloody hell is up with Quirrell?'). "Spiders are scary?"

"Spiders are scary," agreed the twins in stereo, nodding seriously.

Looking like he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer, Percy asked, " ... is there a reason for that?"

Two head shook. "They're scary," the twins repeated.

Percy frowned, but let it pass. "So, possible spider-related trauma aside ... you think that Quirrell and possibly Snape are trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone, which you think is hidden on the forbidden third-floor corridor behind a Cerberus, and you have deduced this from a number of surprisingly convincing clues." The twins nodded. Percy pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "And you have failed to report this to the Headmaster ... _why_, exactly?"

"McGonagall wouldn't let us," said Fred promptly. "Because, y'know, we're us," added George.

"Ah," said Percy. Then he picked up the parchment and bookmarked the book with it, and stood up from the table. "Be back. Don't go anywhere."

"Er - "

"_I _am not you," said Percy, "and unlike you, I know where the Headmaster's office is." Without further ado, he swept out the portrait hole, looking imperiously pompous as usual (if slightly paler than normal).

Oliver said, "I thought you two knew where everything was?"

"We do," said Fred defensively. George explained, "But Dumbledore's office is password-locked, and we don't know the password."

"Ah."

Percy returned some time later, and Fred and George's game of Exploding Snap stopped rather abruptly as they observed their brother storm into the common room. He was _seething_. "He doesn't believe me!" he hissed as he slammed the book back onto the table and dropped, fuming, into his chair. "He just gave me this awful patronizing look and said that all the faculty have his full confidence and also it was none of my business! Me! A _prefect!_" He glared at the parchment as if it had somehow infused him with Fred-and-George-like incredibility and was therefore responsible for all of his problems. "And then he said that when You-Know-Who tried to break in - not if, _when _- he'd have more to deal with than Fluffy and just _dismissed _it as if it _wasn't a big deal_!"

There was a pause, as everyone tried to figure out which of these things to address first. Eventually Fred said, "Um, _Fluffy_?"

"Apparently the Cerberus is named Fluffy," said Percy, grinding his teeth. "Because, you know, when it has teeth as big as Fang's head and fur that can deflect curses, that's the _bloody obvious _thing to name it." He blamed Hagrid. It had to have been Hagrid. No one else was that willfully oblivious to danger - except, apparently, the Headmaster. Who did not think Quirrell was going to try to steal the Stone but did think that _Voldemort _was going to try, which for some reason he seemed to think was _less _of a problem ...

Oliver looked as if he was contemplating running away before his Seeker had a complete meltdown and started hexing everything in reach, but eventually he ventured, "Perce, it's _Dumbledore_. If he thinks it's not a big deal, maybe it isn't?"

"What part of _You-Know-Who breaking into Hogwarts to steal the Philosopher's Stone and resurrect himself _is _NOT A BIG DEAL?" _snapped Percy, only barely keeping his voice to below hysterical levels.

"Um ... "

Fred said, "Well, Dumbledore was supposed to be the only person You-Know-Who was afraid of, right?" George offered, "Maybe he figures he can stop You-Know-Who himself and that's why he's not worried."

Percy shut his eyes for a second, took a deep breath, and then said, "Sure. Okay. That makes sense. Except for the part where he decided that _in the middle of a school _was the best place to have this happen - "

"Maybe he didn't?" said Oliver, who was feeling very frightened by the specter of Percy Weasley _not _being the most calm, reasonable person in the room. (It had not occurred to him that Percy had been just old enough, when Gideon and Fabian Prewett died at the hands of Voldemort, to remember his mother crying.) Oliver was not, however, particularly frightened about the Philosopher's Stone, now that they'd gotten an official reassurance on the subject from Dumbledore. "I mean, it's not _his, _right, it's this Flamel guy's. So ... maybe Flamel put it here? And Dumbledore's just, you know, coping with it as best he can, which given that he's Dumbledore is pretty well?"

Percy stared at him, his eyes slightly unfocused. (He was still thinking about his mother.)

Oliver glanced at his watch and jolted. "It's like seven AM, guys. We've got to play Ravenclaw in two hours."

"Oh, wonderful," said Percy, his voice slightly strained. "I guess next time we will just have to reschedule our terrifying discoveries about the imminent possible destruction of the entire country better, next time, won't we? Oliver, _how can you possibly be thinking about Quidditch right now - _"

"Because I trust Dumbledore?" offered Oliver. "Also, to reiterate, two hours to kickoff."

Eventually Percy assented to stop yelling, take a shower, change, and head downstairs for breakfast. By the time they were joined at the table by the rest of Gryffindor, he had calmed down quite a bit and agreed that it was probably nothing Dumbledore couldn't handle.

Saturday morning's Quidditch game was - perhaps predictably, given the nature of sleep-deprived wizards - somewhat deranged.


	30. Life and Purpose

It wasn't that Severus didn't _like _being a teacher.

He genuinely enjoyed his NEWT classes, which were very small and contained only students who were actually good at the subject, and most of whom enjoyed it. That meant that he didn't need to be angry and terrifying all the time to get his students to focus on their work, and could actually focus on talking about Potions. NEWT classes were when he typically started discussing theory and how to alter potions recipes - which was the most interesting part of the subject - because any sooner and he'd likely have serious injuries every other day. So no, he didn't hate being a teacher, some parts of it were definitely great.

He just wished he could teach _only _the NEWT classes; because Severus had never been very good with children, even when he _was _a child. He did not in any way enjoy dealing with the spectacular and repetitive failures of the younger students (seriously, who turns a Shrinking Solution _orange? _that shouldn't even be _possible!_), and occasionally grumbled to Dumbledore about this. Dumbledore ignored him, naturally.

Still, despite the relatively good balance of pleasant tasks to unpleasant ones at the moment, the Potions Master actually was starting to feel a sense of deep unhappiness in his job. This year was the year that Lily's son would have begun school, _should have _begun school, had Snape not been so astoundingly stupid as to get them all killed by reporting the prophecy to Voldemort. And so he felt very much like he did not belong. Who was he to be blithely going about his life, teaching classes (how strangely mundane it felt, still, after the War), as if Lily Evans had never been (and shone and fought and died)?

It helped that Voldemort wasn't, apparently, entirely dead. It gave him some kind of purpose, even if that purpose was only revenge. But it seemed strange to be casually going about his life, as if at this precise moment the Dark Lord were not plotting to steal the Philosopher's Stone, as if any day he might interrupt everything by breaking into the school. (An odd place to set a trap, Hogwarts; but apparently, Flamel had insisted.) Severus did not care about any of the students as individuals, did not have any particular attachment to any of them as _people_, but in ten years he had started to really think of himself as a teacher. That meant that he was responsible for them, that the students were under his protection (how strange, that he should expect to be able to protect anyone). He did not like the idea that they were here, in the building, vulnerable to danger should the Death Eaters break into the school, probably - Dumbledore said - with Quirrell's help. This concern, he had not shared; Severus suspected that Minerva would mock him for having acquired a heart.

(He had no idea, really, how they were friends. Perhaps it was just one of those things that happened to people who'd fought a war, that they could be friends with each other and not really with anyone else, even if they hadn't been on the same side.)

But he did talk to Dumbledore about the sensation of pointlessness he was experiencing. "What am I doing with my life?" he asked the Headmaster, rather plaintively.

The Headmaster had said amiably, "Living," and when Severus did not accept this at face value, sighed and offered an alternative suggestion. He proceeded to explain the present dilemma he was attempting to handle - ("What," said Severus, "the Dark Lord trying to break into your school isn't _enough _problems for you?") - which was that Gringotts was being strangely reticent on the subject of the Potters. Jared Nott, a close associate of Lord Malfoy, had made an inquiry of the Wizengamot as to why there were presently only six Noble Houses, and indeed there had been for ten years as of Halloween. He had wanted to know why the deaths of the Potters were not being properly addressed.

Severus had inquired at once, "Why does Nott care about the Potters?" Jared Nott, despite his age, had only one young son, presently a first year in Slytherin, because his elder children had died in 1976, at the ages of twelve and nine, during the War. No one had ever been charged with anything, but it had happened about a week after the rather violent deaths of a number of Muggle-born children attending a Muggle primary school in London at the hands of a Death Eater group (which Severus knew had indeed been led by Nott). And Charlus Potter, Lord of House Potter at the time, had been known to look unusually smug when the subject came up. So Severus thought it rather more likely that Nott would want the statue in Godric's Hollow melted for scrap, than that he'd want anyone to remember any Potters had ever existed.

Dumbledore had explained that the Nott family was, at an educated guess, the most wealthy common House in Gringotts, which meant that they were probably next in line to be ennobled. And _then _he'd explained: "But Gringotts, for reasons unknown to all, has steadfastly refused to appoint a new seventh Noble House. When pressed, they insisted that House Potter is _not actually extinct._"

This made Severus start. "_What_?"

"Apparently," said Dumbledore, "Gringotts believes that there is, in existence, a magical heir. They will not, however, disclose that person's identity, or for that matter confirm whether their surname is actually Potter. This is, as you might imagine, of some concern to me," Dumbledore sighed, "since I have in my possession an artifact which belongs rightfully to the House of Potter."

Severus frowned. "Why wouldn't it - " he began, and then stopped midsentence as the same possibility Neville Longbottom had earlier speculated on occurred to him. "A Squib descendant?"

"Or simply a descendant in the female line," pointed out Dumbledore. "For a recent example, consider Draco Malfoy, who is technically in the line of inheritance for both the Houses of Malfoy and Black, because of his mother. This is not _common_, but it does happen. However," he frowned. "The House of Potter is, historically, not prone to large families. James Potter was an only child, and so were his father and grandfather. Indeed, judging by the genealogy, they suffer a similar problem to that of the Weasley family, the tendency not to have female children." The Headmaster tapped his fingers absently on the table, faintly curious. "Someday I am going to have time to investigate that phenomenon."

"You think there is a magical explanation for chromosomal anomalies in wizarding families?" said Severus, distracted by the interesting academic problem. "I don't think there is much evidence for such a thing, magic is fairly prone to _erasing _genetic anomalies. That's why all the inbreeding hasn't killed the purebloods yet."

Dumbledore blinked several times, looking faintly disconcerted. Severus carefully controlled his amusement. The Headmaster, he found, occasionally forgot that his potions master was half-blood, had been raised in a Muggle town by a Muggle father, and had spent a rather large portion of his childhood learning Muggle science in an effort to impress Lily Evans (not that it had worked). Dumbledore himself did not do nonmagical research of any kind, and judging from his reaction, was not at all familiar with genetics. Evidently, however, he didn't want to get distracted, and so he took the pause that Severus had learned to identify as 'making a mental note', and changed the subject back. "We'll look into it. As I was saying, I do not think the odds of a Potter heir appearing in some other wizarding family are very high. A Squib descendant is _more _likely, but still not _likely_."

Severus considered that. "So, you suggest that Gringotts is lying?" A Potter descendant unrelated to Lily would not be particularly interesting to him, except inasmuch as he would be inclined to kill it, but the potential problem of the goblin bank becoming rebellious _was _interesting. If his purpose could not be to teach (he still got less than half as many NEWT students as Minerva and Filius), could not be to protect (plotting and planning and sneaking around, but protecting was Dumbledore's job), perhaps it could still be to fight.

Dumbledore laughed outright at this, which made Severus frown at him. He knew Dumbledore well, but sometimes he still reacted in ways that were puzzling. "It is a great tragedy of our culture, Severus, that goblin insincerity is the first thing most wizards will suggest," said the Headmaster. "No, I do not think they are lying at all! I think that they assume, perhaps rightly, that what information they have is too sensitive for the ears of the Wizengamot." Oh. Well, that was fair; the Wizengamot were full of decrepit old noble folk and grasping politicians, and there were a great many things in the world that it was probably safer for them not to know.

Nodding, Severus asked, "So, then ... what _do _you think the goblins know?"

"_And neither can die while the other yet lives,_" quoted Dumbledore, all levity gone from his face. "If Voldemort is still alive in some form, Severus, and I think it would be unrealistic of us to assume that he is not, then so too is Harry Potter."


	31. Why Bedtime Is Important

It is a widely-held misconception in the wizarding world that accidental magic ends at the age of eleven.

This is entirely untrue; but the misconception persists for a very simple reason. Beyond eleven, witches and wizards tend only to manifest accidental magic when they are both stressed and either drunk or very tired, and both types of situations tend to coincide with fuzzy memory. The minority of people in the magical world who are aware of this phenomenon tend towards the groups of people most likely to encounter drunk and/or exhausted people while they are themselves in possession of all of their faculties - that is, bartenders, Healers, and teachers.

Although this phenomenon does occasionally interrupt upper-year classes (McGonagall and Flitwick keep a running tally of accidental magic incidents in their NEWT classes, and anyone with more than one in a week gets remanded to Madam Pomfrey to be force-fed a sleeping draught), it does not usually cause any trouble at Quidditch games. Fifth- and seventh-year students typically make up less than a quarter of the players and of that number not all are as concerned about their examinations as their peers; and in any case just one night of missed sleep is usually not enough to exhaust a teenager sufficiently to cause problems.

But Percy and Oliver had been up well into Friday morning. Percy had promised to try to sleep at a sensible hour Friday if Oliver would stay up Thursday to study, which they had both thought was a perfectly reasonable solution until they found Friday that Oliver was too nervous to sleep. That meant they'd both had about three hours of sleep in the previous forty-eight hours. The twins, who had been in the process of recovering from spider-related trauma, hadn't done much better. And Stewart Carmichael, one of the Ravenclaw chasers, was in seventh year, taking _all _the electives, and hadn't had more than four hours' sleep a night in several weeks.

Thus, the situation today is highly unusual: one Ravenclaw, and _four _Gryffindors, are well into the danger zone.

Keith MacDougal gave Oliver Wood a _very _odd look when the two captains met in the middle of the field to shake hands. "Are you even trying, Wood?" he asked skeptically. "You look dead on your feet, and so do your Weasleys." Behind Oliver, the twins were leaning on each other, and Percy looked like he would dearly have loved to hex everyone in reach if that would permit him to go back to bed.

"Um," said Oliver, wincing, "I did not do that on purpose, and also shut up." He offered a half-hearted glare, which would have been sharper had he had the energy for it, or if he'd really felt all that much animosity for his opposite number. In the previous game, Slytherin's Seeker had caught the Snitch so quickly that the rest of the field hadn't had time to score any goals, putting the score at 150-0 and Slytherin's marginal score at +240, higher than Ravenclaw's present +180 and Gryffindor's +130. Ravenclaw would need to win by only seventy to win the Cup, whereas Gryffindor would need a margin of a hundred and twenty.

Which meant that this all basically rode on Percy, because Oliver would rather Ravenclaw win the Cup than Slytherin, and so he'd be making a concerted effort to _not be losing by more than thirty, _but had already told his Chasers that their job was mainly to maintain that balance, not to score an excessive number of goals. To win without the Snitch they'd have to be winning by more than a hundred and fifty, and Ravenclaw was _good_, and if they were winning by less than that but more than ninety and Cho Chang caught the Snitch, Slytherin would win the Cup and nobody wanted that to happen.

(Angelina had looked at him like he was crazy when he explained this, and said, "Wood, are you feeling okay?", because evidently it was weird that he was too tired to overwrite Percy's reasonable suggestions with his normal level of craziness. Oh, well.)

He explained this to Keith, too, since he did not like being accused of not trying to win. In response, Keith blinked at him in puzzlement. "I ... appreciate that you like me more than Flint?" he said after a moment, and then added, "But it is really, really weird that you have any faith in Percy Weasley's ability to be a better Seeker than me."

Oliver shrugged. "I work with what I've got," he said."Best of luck, MacDougal."

"And to you," the Ravenclaw replied, nodding politely as he turned to rejoin his team.

The whistle blew, and they were off.

Half an hour into the game, Lee Jordan's commentary began to get somewhat strange.

"Gryffindor in possession," he was saying, "Angelina Johnson does not seem to have noticed that her hair is purple - oops - Ravenclaw in possession, Bradley headed straight for - where did Oliver go?" (A brief pause.) "I ... think Wood's just gone invisible? Is that a foul?"

McGonagall's voice could be heard through the loudspeaker: "Not presently, but I think we may have to add it to the list."

"Sorry!" yelled Oliver in the general direction of the stands, flickering back into view as he stole the Quaffle and cast about for his Chasers. He had some trouble with this task, since everything had suddenly gone all blurry.

"Wood in possession, and he looks confused, I dunno what's up with that - "

"Glasses," explained Percy, dropping into Oliver's personal space rather suddenly. He reached out to retrieve his glasses, which had recently spent some time pretending to be an owl and then landed on Oliver's face rather than his own. (Percy had a _rather _powerful prescription, but the propensity of the twins to steal his glasses had made him surprisingly adept at blind navigation.)

"Bloody hell, your eyes are terrible," said Oliver, pitching the Quaffle at Katie now that he could see her properly. She dodged Ogden Quirke, tried to pass to Alicia, and had her throw intercepted by Stewart Carmichael, who whooshed off back towards the Gryffindor goalposts trailing feathers, with Alicia and Angelina in hot pursuit.

Percy said "Sorry?" in Oliver's general direction, and then quite awkwardly dodged a Bludger, which bounced off a goalpost, turned orange, and then caught Oliver in the gut as Percy was trying to right himself, looking dizzy. Oliver was knocked back about ten feet, and Carmichael took advantage of the opportunity to score, prompting a round of cheers from the Ravenclaw stands, Oliver's hair to stand on end, and a certain amount of cursing from the loudspeaker.

The high density of intermittent weird shit (as George would later describe it) did not decrease as the game went on. By the hour and a half mark, the score was 100-60 in Ravenclaw's favor, and McGonagall and Flitwick were having a quiet argument about whether they ought to call the match before someone caught fire.

By two hours, they had decided it was a bad idea to cancel the match because they might end up with a school-wide riot on their hands, judging by the amount of yelling that was happening in both scarlet- and blue-clad crowds, and they were also rather wishing something as simple as combustion would happen. Several of the brooms had attempted to pretend to be various pieces of furniture (Fred Weasley, to his evident confusion, had spent almost five minutes flying around on a squashy armchair), everything and everyone on the field had changed colour at least twice, and Oliver Wood had had an extra arm for an entire minute.

"Johnson in possession, Davies is flying to block," Lee was saying, and George hit a Bludger at the Ravenclaw Keeper, with the clear intention of distracting him so that Angelina could get by.

Roger Davies made a rather undignified squeaking noise as he was hit in the face with an extremely startled ball of grey snarling fur.

" - and George has just hit him with a - cat, I think?" said Lee, sounding baffled. "Er, and Angelina scores, ten points for Gryffindor, and I don't know what the score is because the scoreboard has been overwritten by a bunch of exclamation points, Professor, do you know what the score is?"

"A hundred to seventy, Ravenclaw," said McGonagall, who appeared to be torn between amusement and stern disapproval. Flitwick was experiencing no such conflict; he was chuckling delightedly beside his colleague.

" - a hundred to seventy, Ravenclaw in the lead, apparently," said Lee, "anyway, Ravenclaw back in possession - no, scratch that, the Quaffle just turned into a Bludger and Carmichael dropped it - it's a Quaffle again, Spinnet in possession - "

Percy Weasley observed a small sparrow flit past him, rather hazily. Everything seemed to be turning foggy and, to be entirely honest, he had no idea whether this was a true fact about the world or just a thing he was hallucinating. The bird appeared to be real, though.

He reached out with both hands and caught it.

It fluttered unhappily at him.

"Are you the Snitch?" he asked it, quite as if he expected it to answer.

It chirped.

Percy glared at it sternly. It stubbornly failed to stop being a bird.

Keith MacDougal swooped by, looking curious (and with condensation beaded all over him, so the fog was probably real; that was reassuring). "Is that a sparrow?"

"I dunno," said Percy. "I ... think it might be the Snitch?"

Below them, the grey cat had jumped onto Alicia - apparently it could still fly like a Bludger - and John Bradley had inexplicably been soaked in orange juice. Keith pulled his wand from inside his robes, pointed it at Percy, and said, "_Finite incantatem!_"

The bird turned back into a Snitch.

Keith burst out laughing, as Lee Jordan yelled "GRYFFINDOR'S GOT THE SNITCH!", and the crowds exploded in cheers.

(Percy shrugged, put the Snitch in his pocket, dropped to the ground at speed, and promptly fell asleep. When he woke up, he was told that Angelina and Alicia had levitated their sleeping teammates back to the school after McGonagall and Flitwick dispelled the fog, and that Keith MacDougal had had trouble congratulating them properly on their win because he kept laughing too hard to speak.)


	32. Gryffindoring, pt 2

The week of exams was stressful for everyone in Gryffindor Tower. Partly because the OWL and NEWT students were freaking out and snapping at everyone that spoke louder than a whisper, but also because everyone else was taking exams, too. The first-years were especially obsessive about it, among people who were not taking Life-Outcome-Determining Examinations (Percy kept calling them that). Though it had been long enough that they all had started to consider their studies a natural part of life, they _were _still thinking about Hermione Granger, and they'd ended up doing math about it. Fred and George had observed, with some amusement, that the first-year Gryffindors tended to solve problems they didn't understand by looking at them and saying, "Okay, what would Hermione do?", which usually ended in them going to the library.

"Alright, so we assume that we average somewhat above a passing grade, because in the natural state of things we probably wouldn't all do much better than passing," said Seamus, writing _75% x 6 _at the top of a sheet of parchment. "And Hermione gets a perfect score, because all know she would." He wrote below the first line, + _100% x 1, _and then underneath that drew a division line and wrote _7, _and then stared at it for a second. Then he scratched out the arithmetic by hand, because he wasn't actually all that much better at math than the rest of them, he'd just done okay in his Muggle primary school (Dean and Parvati had also attended Muggle primary schools, unlike the others who'd been homeschooled, but Dean had spent his math class doodling on his notebook and Parvati had spent hers annoying Padma).

( _0.75 + 0.75 + 0.75 + 0.75 + 0.75 + 0.75 + 1.0 ) / 7 _he wrote, and eventually arrived, after a certain amount of scribbling, at _5.5/7._ Then Seamus frowned at this for a while. Eventually he recalled how to do long division and arrived, after more scribbling, at _ = 0.785. _"So since Hermione's not here to pull up the average, we've all got to do at least as well as seventy-nine percent," he concluded.

And so they obsessed.

(It had not really occurred to any of them that spending most of the year actually putting forth constant effort in class would make it much _easier _to score higher on the exams. The twins didn't tell them, because they were having too much fun watching their little brother and his friends be almost as freaked out as Percy for much less reason.)

* * *

><p>At the end of the week, Ron and Neville went to visit Hagrid, to recover from their exams. Over tea and crunchy biscuits, they talked and relaxed. Hagrid had endless amusing stories about the occasionally bizarre behavior of the Hogwarts grounds, and in the conversational lulls Ron tried gamely, as he had been trying all year, to educate Neville about professional Quidditch. At one point, however, he asked curiously, "So Hagrid, how <em>did <em>you get hold of a Norwegian Ridgeback egg, anyway?"

"Well - "

Things happened rather quickly after that, and in the future Ron and Neville would never be able to adequately describe them except in terms of brief snippets of conversation, between which things blurred into unimportance, and a great deal of running.

* * *

><p>For Ron, it began with very simple question.<p>

"Hey Fred, George, do you know of a dog around here named _Fluffy_?"

* * *

><p>For Fred and George, it began with a panic, and running to the first person they could think of that ought to be able to deal with the problem.<p>

"Percy! You-Know-Who knows how to get into the third floor corridor _you've got to tell Dumbledore!" _

* * *

><p>For Percy, it began with a flat rejection by a teacher he thought respected him.<p>

"Mr. Weasley, as I have already told your brothers and the Headmaster has told you, the Stone is _perfectly safe_, it is none of your concern, and in any case, Professor Dumbledore is not here. He was called away on urgent business to the Ministry - "

* * *

><p>There was an argument.<p>

"We have got to do something."

"If You-Know-Who gets the Stone we are all _royally fucked _- "

"Language!"

"Percy, this is really not the time to be concerned about that - "

* * *

><p>The argument went on for awhile.<p>

"Percy, if you're not going to be the voice of reason here - "

"We have to do _something!_"

"You said, no Gryffindoring! _You_ said that!"

* * *

><p>(They'd been there for hours, it felt like.)<p>

"This is a _bad idea_, you are going to get in _so much trouble._"

* * *

><p>No one could ever remember who, exactly, had decided first that they would have to go down to the third-floor corridor regardless of whether anyone else followed. It was all a blur of yelling and freckles and red hair standing on end, and the rest of the House of Gryffindor staring in shock and confusion at the dispute. In retrospect, however, they would eventually agree that it had probably been Ron.<p>

* * *

><p>None of the Weasleys, however, would ever forget the image of round-faced, pudgy, unimposing eleven-year-old Neville Longbottom, panting from running up the stairs after Ron. He'd faced down the four of them and their argument, their conclusion that something had to be done, alone. He'd been a head shorter than any of them and all the same stood there, with his fists raised in a bizarre, childish caricature of defiance.<p>

"I won't let you! I'll - I'll fight you!"

* * *

><p>The rest of Gryffindor would not remember this. They, instead, would mostly remember Percy Weasley, standing in the middle of the room with his wand raised.<p>

"_Stupefy! Anyone else?" _

(And after that, there was silence.)

* * *

><p>The four Weasleys left the Common Room, three of them gaping openly at the eldest member of their group, who was striding rather quickly down the hallway with a grim expression on his face. "Percy," said Ron, after about five minutes of following in stunned silence.<p>

"Yes?" replied Percy, quite calmly.

" ... did you actually just hex Neville?"

"Technically," said Percy, staring at the door to the forbidden third-floor corridor, which was ajar, "Stupefy is a _jinx_, not a hex."

* * *

><p>He could deny it all his life if he liked, and perhaps he would, but Percy Weasley really was a Gryffindor.<p> 


	33. Everything Is Trying To Kill Us

The sound of growling greeted them as they stepped into the forbidden third floor, and Percy flinched so hard that if you'd asked any of the other three Weasleys in that split second whether they thought he was about to bolt, they'd have all said _definitely_. But he didn't, despite the fact that entering Forbidden territory was clearly frightening him a great deal more than Fluffy was. Rather, he took a step forward, and said, "Ron, what did you say Hagrid said about the dog?"

Ron gulped. "He, um," he stammered, "he said you need _music _..." It sounded patently ridiculous, that suggestion, in the face of the snarling dog itself, but that was what Hagrid had said; and judging by the door-left-ajar and the absence of any other presence in the room, Snape or Quirrell or whoever (there was some general disagreement on this point) had gone down the trapdoor.

Fred hummed a phrase, and then George picked it up, and then the pair of them burst into song without further ado: "_Beat back those Bludgers, boys, and chuck that Quaffle here!_" Their voices were high and somewhat nervous, which made them sound patently ridiculous, but they could carry a tune, and apparently that was good enough. Ron scampered over to the trapdoor as Fluffy began to droop. Then the dog began to come alert again, as the twins discovered that they did not actually remember any more of the words: "_We'll get the Golden Snitch again and - da da da-da _shit uh - "

Fluffy growled.

The third line was _almost _the same as the first - "_Beat back those Bludgers, boys, and_ - "

Percy, scrunching his face together into a grimace of almost comical pain, joined in. " - _toss that Quaffle down_," he supplied. His voice had dropped properly about a year and a half ago, but he had never actually been any good at singing, and his scratchy baritone only sort of hit all the right notes, which made Fluffy give him an almost intelligently sardonic look (_seriously? Is that the best you can do? I should eat you for the insult_). The twins, however, evidently did not think that right this second was a great time to mock their brother. Their bright tenor joined him again a moment later. "_Just listen to that crowd cheer, what a wondeeeer-ful sound!_"

Ron got the trapdoor open, glanced between the yawning dark and the only-precariously-nodding-off-Cerberus, and chose the trapdoor. He jumped. The others made it through about two lines of the first verse before the twins dragged Percy bodily through the trapdoor, into a tangled pile of limbs and slithering vines. "You know," said Percy conversationally, "if someone had told me that my life would _actually _depend on my ability to remember the words of Puddlemere United's anthem, I would have told them they were out of their mind."

"How _do _you even know that?" asked George, as Fred muttered "_Lumos_" and looked around.

Percy gave his brother a sardonic look. "George, I have lived with _Oliver Wood _for five years." Oliver had wanted to join Puddlemere more or less ever since he'd found out about the existence of Quidditch; he actually sometimes sang the fight song in his sleep.

George was clearly about to make a snarky comment in reference to this, when Ron made a whimpering noise, and Fred said, "Hey, uh, not to interrupt what would no doubt have been a hilarious argument about Oliver's priorities, but can anyone remember which plant it is that tries to strangle people?"

"Devil's Snare," said Percy automatically, and then, running a little slow on panic, his brain registered the question a moment later. "_What_? Is that what we're sitting on?"

"Yeah, I think so - "

Percy did not bother to try to explain anything. He'd just taken his Herbology OWL a few days ago and did not feel in any way inclined to let his brothers get strangled by something they should have learned about in first year, much as that would be hilarious. He was really way too stressed out already to be coping with his mother's disapproval. "_Inflammare!_"

"_Ow!__"_ yelped Ron as he hit the floor underneath the Devil's Snare with an audible _thump_. "Perce, you just _set me on fire!_"

The dangerous nature of the situation did not in any way prevent the twins from bursting out laughing at this complaint, nor did it dim their amusement that Percy glared at them, folding his arms and ceasing entirely to move. Ron, muttering things to himself that would almost definitely have made his mother ground him for a month, jumped up and down on his flaming robes and tried to remember the wand movement for _aguamenti_.

"Got any light spells that _won't_ set us on fire?" giggled George as Percy began to sink through the plants. Fred said, sound a bit alarmed, "Uh, Perce, it's got you a bit tight there - "

"_Relax_," said Percy airily, "and I won't _have_ to set you on fire."

He did not hit the floor with any more grace than Ron had - probably less, even - but he got to his feet with a minimum of fuss and doused Ron's somewhat-charred robes for him. Ron grumbled something like "Thank you" and put them back on over his uniform, bemoaning the lecture he was going to get from their mother over them later.

"What do you mean, relax?" shouted George. "It's a bit hard to _relax _when you've got a plant trying to eat you!" agreed Fred. "You've just got done doing OWLs, you've _got _to know some kind of super-Lumos spell..."

Percy turned to Ron and inquired politely, "Do _you _know how to cast a Sunlight Charm?" Ron raised an eyebrow. "Because _I _think it would be much funnier to temporarily set them on fire, personally."

McGonagall had often expressed the desire to immolate the Weasley twins for their shenanigans; in the wizarding world, being set on fire was not nearly as dangerous as it was in the Muggle world, after all. They wouldn't be _hurt_, just frightened and hopefully slightly inconvenienced. Although - it _was _sort of weird that Percy was being so flippant about this. On Halloween he'd seemed frightened, with the Norbert adventure he'd been sharply controlled; Percy's behavior now smelt dangerously of an imminent breakdown. So Ron did the only thing he could: tried to ignore it. He said, wryly, "You have been spending _way _too much time with McGonagall."

"Possibly," said Percy brightly. "Better me than Oliver, though, he'd probably give them detention every time they were late to practice."

Ron laughed at that, but then got to business. He _did _in fact know the Sunlight Charm, which Professor Sprout had mentioned in class and Ron's study group had looked up. Parvati had figured it out first and showed everyone else, and Ron had been close to last to get it (Charms still wasn't his strong point), but he had learned. He pointed his wand at the ceiling of plants above them, inscribed a circle with it, and said, "_Lumos solem!_" _  
><em>

A moment later, in a tangle of coughing limbs, the twins scrambled to their feet and dusted themselves off. "_Thank you_," said George. "We are _never _yelling at you for studying ever again," said Fred, clapping his little brother on the shoulder. "Well, at least not for a year or so," added George, who had a slightly more realistic ability to assess their tendency to take things seriously.

Ron laughed. "I'll take that."

The four of them, more-or-less unharmed, headed onward. Cautiously stepping through a door, the Weasleys found themselves faced with an odd sight: a broomstick lying abandoned on the floor, and a bunch of fluttering winged keys of myriad colours, and a great ornate door on the opposing side of the room. Fred and George skittered across the room, emboldened when they were not attacked. "_Alohomora!_" said Fred, tapping the lock, and then George pulled on the door. It remained firmly locked. He shrugged. "Worth a try."

"So one of the keys, then," said Ron, looking around in dismay. "There must be hundreds of them."

"Probably real old," said George, frowning at the lock. Fred added, "Silver."

Percy brandished his wand and said, "_Accio old silver key!_", but absolutely nothing happened. He sighed. To no one in particular, he grumbled, "No, of course not, why would this be _sensible?_", and then strode over to the broom lying innocently on the ground. "Anyone want to bet the keys attack me as soon as I pick this up?" he inquired. Three heads shook. No, they were not in the habit of making poor bets. "Anyone know a Shield Charm? We did those in third year ... " But no, the twins were shaking their heads. " ... right, Greengrass was the only competent Defense professor we've had since Director Bones was here in Bill's second year, wasn't he. _Great_." And it wasn't as if it would be at all sensible to make anyone else do this. Ron only barely knew how to fly, and the twins, human Bludgers though they were, were _terrible _at catching things, even Quaffle-sized things. _  
><em>

This was going to suck.

"Sorry!" said Fred apologetically, though it wasn't really his fault that he had never had a competent Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. George added, "We can _try._"

Percy made a face. "We don't exactly have time for this," he said, "but better than not, I suppose. Really quick - wand like so," he demonstrated, "wrist flick thus, and _Protego!_" It was not the best shield - Percy's wavered - but it did exist. Edward Greengrass (now reportedly an Unspeakable - it was widely agreed that the entire student body had been Obliviated when he left, because _no one _could remember what had happened) had been a decent instructor. "Go ahead and try," he said, "and be ready to run."

He picked up the broomstick. To absolutely no one's surprise, the entire roomful of keys immediately wheeled about and dived on him. Percy sighed again and took off, wishing he'd brought his own broom. This one was really not that great, which was probably the point.

"There!" yelled George, "that one!", and Percy followed his pointing finger to an ornate silver key with blue wings, struggling along on a bent wing. Evidently, someone had caught it earlier. Well, that boded well, thought Percy sarcastically. This was such an amazingly bad idea.

Ten minutes later, covered in tiny scratches and gasping for breath, Percy hit the ground none-too-gracefully and ran for the door. He shoved the key into Ron's hand and paused to pant for breath as his little brother fumbled the key into the lock. Fred and George were yelling "_Protego!_" repeatedly in an attempt to fend off the still-aggressive keys; only about one in every three or four even remotely had any effect, but it was at least preventing them all from turning into pincushions, and as Percy couldn't seem to get enough air into his lungs to help them, he appreciated it.

The lock clicked, and Ron didn't so much open the door as drive his shoulder into it and run into the next room. In a disorganized tumble the four Weasleys progressed to the other side. Fred and George whistled at the sight before them as Percy slammed the door, wincing at the sound of the keys dive-bombing it _en masse_.

A giant chessboard was painted across the floor, and on it stood great stone pieces, staring impassively at one another, yet nevertheless beckoning silently. _Play with us_. Ron said quietly, "Oh, no."

Percy said, "You have _got_ to be kidding me."

"Well," said George, "do _you _know how to cursebreak, Perce? 'Cause _we _don't." The unspoken point lingered in the air: unless you can take the chessboard apart, you'll have to play your way across it like a sap walking right into a trap. Or else you turn around and go home; and they were too Gryffindor for that.

Percy rubbed his temples. "I am not _actually _that good at chess," he said, "I'm good at playing chess _against Ron._" He knew his little brother well enough, and had played enough with him, to accurately predict his moves well enough to be a decent challenge. But he'd tried playing with Alicia Spinnet once - she was half-decent at the game - and lost rather spectacularly. _  
><em>

Fred clapped his little brother on the back cheerfully. "Well then!" he said. "Guess you're in charge, Ronnikins."

Ron made a strangled, terrified noise, and then took a deep, measured breath. "Right," he said. "Right. Okay. Give me a second." He stared at the board. "We're supposed to play black, obviously."

"I do not appreciate your unsubtle symbolism, Headmaster," grumbled Percy under his breath.

Ron ignored this comment, evidently in favor of things he understood. "Fred, George, you play the rooks," he said, "and I'll be a knight." Percy could guess why he'd chosen those; Ron had a tendency to use his bishops as cannon fodder and his Queen as a sacrifice piece, whereas he often had rooks and knights left at the end of the game. But he was a little puzzled when Ron added, "and Perce, you be the King."

Percy blinked. "_What_?"

The twins were already hopping onto the board, fearless as ever. Percy wished he could ignore stress and panic as easily as they seemed to be able to. Ron shrugged a bit fatalistically as he headed towards a knight, past the black castles which were drifting out of the twins' way. "I'm twelve, and not that smart," he said bluntly. "Fred and George are brilliant, but they're only two years older than me. Realistically, you're the only one of us that has _any _chance _at all _of even slightly inconveniencing You-Know-Who." He swung up onto a stone horse with surprising grace. Maybe he'd been practicing his broomstick riding more than Percy thought. "So you're the King."

Percy could not fault this logic, uncomfortable as it made him. So he stepped onto the board and took the place of the King. "White moves first," said Ron, and sure enough, one of the white pawns slid implacably across the board.

The first time one of their pawns was taken, it was knocked to pieces with brutal efficiency, and Percy could see Ron cringe even from most of the way across the board.

The only thing Percy could think was, _Oh, Merlin, Mum is going to kill me. _


	34. Quirrelmort

Ron was biting holes in his lower lip, but he didn't seem to have noticed that he was bleeding; he was too focused on the game. Unlike every other game of chess he'd played - even against Alicia, who had proposed forfeit terms and had subsequently been dragged giggling and shrieking into the lake in February - this one had real, potentially _dangerous _consequences if he lost. Or even, Percy thought with a wince as the White Queen took apart a pawn mere feet from Fred, if he didn't.

"Fred, take that bishop," ordered Ron, "er, I mean, queen's rook to H-6." Fred strode forward, and then slowed as the problem visibly occurred to him. How was he supposed to _take _anything? He didn't have a giant stone sword like the other pieces (or giant stone fists, in the case of the White Queen). "Just sort of ... walk into its space I guess?" suggested Ron dubiously when he noticed this problem.

Percy was quietly trying to remember the wand movements for a Reductor Curse, which he'd passed over briefly in his Defense textbook but not learned as it wasn't on the official OWL syllabus. Fred awkwardly stepped into the white bishop's space, making a vague _go away! _gesture at it; Percy could swear that the bishop actually raised an eyebrow at Fred. He said, "Fred, you may want to duck?", and then aimed his wand and prayed he was remembering correctly. "_Reducto!_"

Fred hit the floor with surprising speed, and the bishop crumbled. It didn't explode dramatically like Percy had rather been hoping, and most of its constituent pieces were quite large. He made a mental note to practice his offensive spells more, if he survived this. Still, the enchanted board seemed to consider this an acceptable level of destruction, and the white pieces made their move as Fred scrambled back to his feet looking slightly surprised. "Where'd you learn that?" said George curiously. "No offense, Perce, but you aren't exactly the type to practice Curses."

"I do _read_," said Percy airily, not feeling strongly inclined to admit that he'd just made a mental resolution to do just that. He wanted to be prepared if something like this happened again, but he certainly didn't want to _encourage _it to. A few minutes later, there was a decided pause. Percy shot Ron a quizzical look; his little brother appeared to be thinking very hard suddenly. "You alright, Ron?" he asked in concern.

"Um," said Ron. "Well ... no, not really."

"What's wrong?"

Ron swallowed. "I have two workable plans for winning this game," he explained. "Either of which would go fine, if we were playing normal chess. But we _aren't_, and - " Ron stopped, biting his lip. "Do you have any parchment on you?"

Percy blinked. "What?" he said. "No, I don't, why do you - oh. _No, _Ron, absolutely not." Fred and George both jumped; Percy supposed his voice must have gone rather sharp.

"No, what?" said George, who was standing closer to them at the moment, looking puzzled.

There was only one logical reason Ron might have wanted Percy to write down a bunch of instructions. He wanted to give him a flowchart (if white does _x_, you do _y_) for winning, because he firmly expected not to be able to do it himself. "Ron is going to try to _sacrifice himself,_" said Percy, "and that is _not acceptable_ in any way, shape, or form - "

"Would you rather both the twins?" snapped Ron. He looked very pale, which made his bleeding lower lip stand out even more sharply against his freckled face, but also very determined. "That's the other option, Percy, I lose _both _of them to trap the White King, but I can do it myself and the three of you can go through - "

"_No_," said Percy flatly, "no, absolutely not, unacceptable. Find another way." _  
><em>

Ron shook his head. "There isn't one," he said, "I've _been _trying. I know you lot think I'm a prodigy at this or whatever, but I'm not perfect, I'm only twelve, I'm pretty sure I'm playing McGonagall, and anyway you need Fred and George more than you need me, we don't know how many more traps there are - "

"Use us," interrupted Fred, his voice uncharacteristically serious.

Ron's head snapped around in surprise to look at his other brother. "What?"

"Use us," repeated Fred. George was nodding. "We take hits better than you do, we're less likely to die." "And what if we screw this up after you're out?" George added pointedly, as Ron gaped at them, "Then we _all _lose, You-Know-Who gets the Stone, and everyone is royally screwed."

Percy made a frustrated noise. This was not how heroic adventures were supposed to go, this was why he hated having to play hero. You weren't supposed to sit there and play the King while your younger brothers argued over who got to die. They were his _little brothers, _it was _his job _to protect them, not their job to protect him. He shouldn't've let them come along in the first place (_but Percy,_ said a mutinous part of his brain, _you'd be dead by now without them, and then where would all this heroing business be?_) But still - "No, this is ridiculous, I am not letting _any _of you play martyr."

"We haven't got a choice, Percy," said George. Fred nodded. "Like Ron said earlier - we're all more dispensable than you. And right now, _we're _more dispensable than Ron, because he needs to win the game." As one, the twins took a fortifying breath. George said steadily, "This is how you felt when you rescued Granger, isn't it?"

Percy frowned, feeling a deep sense of unease as the situation spiraled out of his control. "What?"

"Like - as if it was your _duty _to do whatever - " "even really dangerous stuff - " "to save the day." "Because there was no one else to do it."

Percy stared at them, his mouth dry. That was, in fact, _exactly _how he'd felt. He'd said as much to everyone who'd asked. _I'm not a hero. I was just doing my duty as a prefect. _Because no one else had been there, no one else had been close enough. And he'd done it without thinking - they had time to think, and they were choosing the dangerous path anyway. Percy would have dearly loved to stop them, to throw himself into the line of fire instead, but Ron had already prevented him from doing that by making him play the King. And now Ron was directing the pieces, and hesitantly accepting the twins' decision with a sort of stoic terror; and Percy didn't have any say in the matter at all.

_Bloody stupid Gryffindor heroes. _

Percy looked away, and gritted his teeth.

Even shutting his eyes, however, could not prevent him from _hearing _the sickening crunch of stone fist on bone, nor the horrible half-muffled gasping noise that Fred made when George was flung off the board, nor the sound of Ron's voice, cracked with suppressed tears, ordering Fred to the same fate.

Ron was crying in earnest by the time he took his last skittering steps and said, in a shaking voice that echoed strangely in the hall, "Checkmate."

Percy broke his stoic frozen stance and bolted off the board towards the twins.

"Fred George Fred George please don't be dead please," he gasped, as he knelt beside their crumpled forms and Ron's shorter strides clattered up behind him. They were both bleeding from the temples, and George's arm was bent in a decidedly unnatural way. Percy felt for pulses - he reached out with both hands, because there was no part of him whatsoever that was capable of deciding between the two of them - and very nearly collapsed in relief. "They're breathing," he said, "they're both breathing, Ron, they're alive."

Ron expelled a great shuddering breath, almost a sob. "Oh," he said, "thank Merlin."

With great effort, Percy got back to his feet. "We've got to - keep going," he said, "they're not going to get worse in the next hour - " _I hope _" - and we really can't do anything for them ourselves." He shut his eyes briefly and took a deep, steadying breath. "Come on. We'll - as soon as we run into someone else, you run back here and get them to Madam Pomfrey, alright?"

Ron's eyes got very wide. "And leave you _alone_?" he squeaked.

"_Yes__," _said Percy sharply. "You're the one who said I'm the only one with a realistic chance - that doesn't mean I'm going to let you be dragon fodder! You are _not _dying on my watch, you are going to _run _the second I tell you to, is that clear?"

Ron's eyes were still very wide - _I don't want you to die either _- but he nodded.

And through the door they went, unmolested by the white chess pieces that watched them sternly as they went.

* * *

><p>At once they were assaulted by the awful stench of troll, which very nearly made Percy turn and bolt on the spot.<p>

_I have PTSD, _he observed almost dryly to himself as Hermione Granger's shrieking echoed at the back of his mind. _Fan-fucking-tastic. _

"It's - dead, I think," said Ron doubtfully, holding his nose and nudging the troll with the toe of his sneaker. "Or sleeping, maybe?"

"Either way let's move," said Percy very quickly, skirting the troll as widely as he could given the size of the room and heading for the opposing door. "Whoever's ahead of us took it out, and we might as well be thankful."

Ron shrugged and followed, still very pale, his wand shaking in his hand. The next room didn't appear to contain an obvious threat at all - at least it didn't, until flames sprung up in the doorway they'd just entered through, to match the ones on the opposing side. With Ron trailing him, Percy very carefully approached the table in the middle of the room, with its seven differently-sized bottles all waiting innocuously in a row. And on the table, a scroll of parchment.

"_Danger lies before you, __while safety lies behind._

_Two of us will help you, whichever you would find._

_One among us seven will let you move ahead;_

_Another will transport the drinker back instead._

_Two among our number hold only nettle wine;_

_Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line._

_Choose, unless you wish to stay here for evermore._

_To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:_

_First, however slyly the poison tries to hide, y__ou will always find some on nettle wine's left side;_

_Second, different are those who stand at either end, b__ut if you would move onward, neither is your friend;_

_Third, as you see clearly, all are different size - n__either dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;_

_Fourth, the second left and the second on the right a__re twins once you taste them, though different at first sight._"

"A logic puzzle," said Percy, staring at it.

Ron, in a nervous attempt at levity, said, "See, I told you we need you, Perce. S'gibberish to me."

Percy made a valiant attempt to laugh, failed utterly, and set to work. Ron, thankfully, was entirely silent as Percy muttered to himself, drawing imaginary charts in the air with his fingers and pointing from one bottle to the other. This was not the sort of thing he did for fun, but it was the sort of thing he was _good_ at, since it involved basic deductive reasoning and, like Arithmancy, did not require you to make _arguments _for your facts; they were either true or they weren't.

A while later he had two bottles in hand: the smallest one, which (at least according to the riddle) contained a potion that would permit someone to pass forward through the black flames; and the mid-sized one which purported to take them back. Without a word he handed Ron the larger of the two. Ron gave him a quizzical look. "This'll take you back," he said. "Go get the twins, use that broomstick in the flying keys room to get past the Snare and Fluffy, you're going to need to take a couple trips - "

"You're going in alone?" squeaked Ron, interrupting with horror in his voice.

Percy nodded, though he very much did not want to. He _wished _he could take his little brother with him, selfish though that desire was; he wanted company, he didn't _want _to go face Voldemort all alone. But there was only enough potion for one, and if there was anything he didn't want even more than he didn't want to fight Voldemort, it was that he didn't want Ron to do it. So he nodded, and said, "Yes. We discussed this. Do not argue with me. Get the twins to Madam Pomfrey, and then ... " he thought for a second " ... and then go to the Owlery. McGonagall was no help earlier and she's not going to be any help now, but Dumbledore might be, given all the proof. Get Hermes and write him out everything we know, and then ... "

After a moment or two of silence, Ron ventured, "And then?"

Percy took a deep breath. "I don't know. And then pray I don't get myself killed, I guess." He drank the potion before he could change his mind, and headed through the black flames. Behind him, he thought he heard Ron's voice shouting, but he didn't understand the words through the roaring of the fire. _  
><em>

* * *

><p>Quirrell. Standing in front of the mirror, making frustrated gestures at it. Well, at least they'd already guessed it was probably Quirrell; that meant Percy didn't have to spare a moment for confusion. "<em>Stupefy!<em>" he hissed, as quietly as possible, pointing his wand at the Defense professor's back. What was it Professor Greengrass had said? _Ninety percent of battles are won by ambushes, _he'd said, when explaining why they needed to know how to defend themselves even if they weren't expecting to be attacked.

Quirrell turned, batting the red bolt away with his wand as if it were an impudent fly, and not even bothering to cast a formal shield charm. Since when had _Quirrell _been any good at duelling? He was afraid of _everything - _oh. Right. He was probably a Death Eater only pretending to be incompetent. _Think a little, Weasley, _Percy chided himself, and tried to control the urge to panic. Bracing himself to duck, he said with an almost-steady sigh, "I was _really _hoping that would work."

"Your overconfidence is almost amusing," observed Quirrell dryly, all hint of a stutter gone. He'd fixed his gaze on Percy, as well as the point of his wand, and looked a great deal more frightening, somehow, even though nothing about him had particularly changed from the Quirrell who had stammered his way through a year of substandard, mostly-theoretical Defense classes. Something about him radiated evil. "What are _you _doing here, Weasley?"

_Good question, _Percy thought. What _was _he doing here? "Er ... trying to stop you?" he offered after a moment, awkwardly, still pointing his wand at the Professor-turned-probably-Death-Eater and wondering whether it would actually do him any good.

"Stop me from doing what?" grinned Quirrell, looking terribly amused, as if Percy's incompetence existed purely for the purpose of being his personal entertainment. "Killing you? Convincing everyone that _p-p-poor st-stuttering P-P-P-Professor Quirrell _is exactly as harmless as he looks? Resurrecting the Dark Lord?"

Percy was starting to feel a distinct sense of being toyed with. He wished he had some clever method of elongating this conversation, to stall for time until Ron could get hold of Dumbledore. But he couldn't actually think of anything. So he just uncomfortably offered the truth: "Um ... all of those things?"

"Too late," said Quirrell smugly, "to all three."

_Well, fuck_.

"_Avada ked - "_

"_Hold_!" hissed a new voice, as Percy was midway through lunging desperately sideways to try to avoid the green death that would have shortly been headed his way. Quirrell's voice had stopped on the instant when it was interrupted by a great echoing hiss, a voice that made shivers run up Percy's spine and made him very much want to run away as fast as he could and never, ever try to do anything this stupid ever again. (Which was sort of how he'd felt on Halloween, and also for the entire last hour or so of his life; if this was how heroing felt all the time, Percy was starting to really wonder how anything heroic ever got done, ever.) "_We can use the boy!_"

Er - what?

Percy did not at all have time to try to analyze this new development, as he had abruptly found himself divested of his wand, and had his hands wrenched rather painfully behind his back. Before he could properly wonder where that voice was coming from (the voice of Voldemort? from _where?__)_, he had been shoved rather unceremoniously in front of the great clawfooted Mirror that stood behind Quirrell. Percy frankly had no idea why he'd felt the need to give the Mirror a capital letter in his mind, it just seemed like the sort of artifact that deserved a capital letter. "Look into the Mirror, boy!" snapped Quirrell.

_Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi, _the Mirror's inscription read. Not a language he recognized.

For lack of a better option, he looked into the Mirror. To his immense surprise, he didn't see himself standing there looking back at him, as one might naturally have expected from a mirror. Rather, he saw himself sitting in the Burrow, reading a book, in the background of a moving scene. In the foreground, Fred and George were chasing Ginny around the living room, while Ron laughed silently from the couch and yelled unknown encouragements; it looked like Ginny had stolen something from the twins. Was this the _future_? Did that mean Fred and George and Ron were all okay? Percy desperately hoped so -

"Well?" said Quirrell impatiently. Percy startled; he'd nearly forgotten Quirrell was there, so absorbed had he been for a moment in the picturesque scene before him. "What do you see, boy?"

"What?" said Percy blankly. Why on Earth would Quirrell care? "I - I see my family," he said truthfully, too startled to even begin to think of a clever lie, or even a stupid lie. "What does this d - " He stopped suddenly, because even as he asked, he was staring at the inscription, and the letters were rearranging themselves in his head. Anagrams weren't an uncommon occurrence in Runes classes.

_I show not your face but your hearts desire. _

A very small part of him wanted to reach up and carve an apostrophe into the mirror; all the other parts of him immediately shoved that part back into oblivion, screaming (are you serious) (what a stupid idea) (this is the worst possible time for that) (you complete nutcase) and other such objections. _  
><em>

" - oh."

So Quirrell wanted the Stone; he presumably looked into the Mirror and saw himself using it to resurrect Voldemort. Or possibly _further_-resurrect Voldemort, if that voice was indeed the disembodied spirit of the not-entirely-deceased dark wizard. (_Actually_, pointed out the part of Percy's brain that was not currently freaking out over the reminder that Voldemort was possibly in the room with him, _that would totally explain the unicorns._) _  
><em>

What did he want from Percy, then? If Percy had been sufficiently not distracted by his family being in danger, he might indeed have seen himself with the Philosopher's Stone; endless wealth and immortality would enable him to have the success he'd always wanted, he'd be able to buy his mum the new marble counter-top she wanted, and shiny things for Ginny because his baby sister should have all the jewelry she wanted, and he could have all the books he wanted and all the time in the world to read them - (he tore his mind away from the daydream with effort) - but how would that actually have been _helpful_? Obviously Quirrell wanted it too, and seeing the Stone in the mirror hadn't actually provided him with information about how to get it. Dumbledore wasn't stupid; Percy didn't think he'd have much better luck. Well, in stories evil wizards were always delighted to explain their plots; maybe he should just ask. Hesitantly, Percy said aloud, "Er - what were you expecting, exactly?"

"The Stone is _in the mirror_," hissed Quirrell angrily, "and you can't get it either - he is useless, my Lord, may I kill him now?"

Dismissively, the hoarse voice of Voldemort (seriously, _where was that coming from?_) said, "If you like, I do not need him."

So much for that.

"_Avada kedavra!" _

Percy flung himself to the floor, entirely gracelessly; his hands were still tied, and he cracked his shoulder against the stones. Ignoring the pain out of sheer panicked adrenaline, he twisted desperately, suspecting he no longer had enough mobility to get out of range of a second shot and having to try anyway. Above his head, the brilliant green light bounced off the Mirror.

The voice of Voldemort made an entirely horrifying shrieking sound. "_Idiot!_" it railed, "_fool, useless failure - _" and more profanity that Percy had stopped listening to, because his brain had focused entirely on the one fact that he had gleaned from it. Quirrell had fired a Killing Curse at a mirror, reasonably expecting the mirror to shatter. Unforgivables didn't, Percy was rather sure, normally bounce off of anything, not even reflective surfaces, that was how the merpopulation in the Baltic had been eradicated with Killing Curses in the 1100s, they didn't bounce off of water (or mirrors) like normal spells... and apparently this Mirror had proven the exception to the rule. The Killing Curse had bounced, and it had _hit Quirrell_.

But apparently not Voldemort, though the shrieking appeared to have stopped.

_Okay, genius, your Defense professor's dead and the disembodied spirit of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is running around loose. What now? _

Percy was halfway through an awkward attempt to get to his feet when a sort of invisible smoke hit him full in the face, and he collapsed as his head exploded with pain. It was the sort of pain that was _nonsensical_, like there wasn't really any possible physical explanation for it; surely there wasn't _actually _anything in _actual _real life that you could do that would hurt this much. As if every nerve in his body had been set on fire, all at the same time. That shouldn't be a _real thing. _For a moment he tried to reject it as impossible, it must be an illusion; but then that didn't actually help, and he gave up, because his brain simply didn't have enough processing power to _ignore _something so enormous.

Some part of him wondered if this was what it felt like to die.

It was only a very small part, though. The rest of him was occupied with the sound of Voldemort's voice, abruptly gentle. That voice was purring in his mind, _Do as I say, child, the pain will stop if you do. _It seemed like such a sensible thing to do, really. Simple possession, painless and guiltless and easy, what a pleasant alternative to this pain ... Surely no one would blame him if he succumbed, he was only a kid, after all, it wasn't _his _job to stand up Voldemort, that was what real Gryffindors were for ...

_No, no, no, no, I am a Weasley, no, I won't, I WON'T - _

Everything went dark.


	35. Victory Without A Prize

Percy gradually became aware of the fact that he wasn't dead. Then he blinked a couple of times and noticed that he was in the hospital wing, for the second time this year; at a distance, he could hear the sound of Ron, his stubborn voice carrying easily through the quiet space. "I'm _fine_, Neville! Merlin's pants, you could give Lavender a run for her money at being smothering - "

Percy sat bolt upright. "_Ron!" _He nearly yelled. Neville, who was standing next to Ron's bed, jumped about three feet and made a terrified whimpering noise, which sent a spike of sharp guilt through Percy. He'd hexed the poor kid, and Neville had only been trying to do the right thing; an apology was probably in order. But first things first. "Ron, where are Fred and George? What happened?"

"They're fine," Ron said immediately, prioritizing correctly, and then gave a quick summary of the story. "We're not sure what happened to _you_, but I got them out with levitation charms and Fluffy almost bit my arm off, and then I didn't even have to go to the Owlery because we ran into Dumbledore halfway across the third floor. He turned up in the hospital wing with you a half-hour later looking right angry about something - dunno what - and by then Madam Pomfrey had already put the twins to rights. She made them stay overnight because of maybe concussions, but they got to leave like two days ago, _I'm _still here because like I said, Fluffy nearly took my arm off - "

"_Two days ago_?" interrupted Percy, shocked.

Ron blinked. "Oh - yeah - you've been out cold for like three days, Perce. Mum was in a right state when she found out what happened - "

"_Mum _was here?" Percy interrupted again.

At that, Ron looked almost confused. "Well, yeah, obviously," he said, "I mean, they send letters home when we get _detention, _of course they told Mum. I think McGonagall Floo-called her, actually, she turned up about five minutes after Dumbledore did. And then we had to try to explain to everyone what happened, and I think Mum couldn't decide whether to be really angry or really proud of us, it was sort of funny, actually. She'll be over the moon to hear you're up. What happened? Dumbledore said you duelled Quirrell?"

Percy made a face. "_Duelled _is a strong word," he said wryly. "More like _accidentally didn't get murdered by_." He made a helpless gesture. "Apparently the nifty magic mirror reflects Killing Curses. All I did was duck."

"On the contrary," said Dumbledore, "you did a great deal." Percy startled and turned around in a hurry. The Headmaster had just, as far as Percy could tell, materialized out of nowhere. Though, he supposed that they hadn't exactly been paying a great deal of attention to their surroundings, and so Dumbledore had probably just walked up behind Percy while he wasn't looking.

"What?" said Percy. What had _he _done? Hex Neville? Seriously endanger himself and several other students? Not die?

"Voldemort attempted to possess you, Mr. Weasley," explained Dumbledore, bright blue eyes twinkling behind his glasses, "and failed. That, in itself, is a remarkable accomplishment for you."

"Er," said Percy. "Oh." Then he remembered _why _Voldemort had tried to possess him. "What happened to the Stone? Where did You-Know-Who go? _Was _he colluding with Snape?"

Dumbledore chuckled. "The Stone is quite safe, Mr. Weasley," he said. "Voldemort has retreated, thankfully, and with any luck we shan't see him again too soon. And no, _Professor _Snape," he gave Percy a pointed look, and Percy winced, "was very much on our side. Indeed, he has been monitoring Professor Quirrell all year, in case of just such a scenario as the one that took place this past weekend. It was he who warned me that you and your brothers had become involved."

Percy frowned at Dumbledore. Something was nagging at him, a piece of the puzzle not quite fitting. "The Stone is safe," he said, "_how_, exactly?"

The Headmaster somehow managed to look humbly smug, which was something Percy had never seen anyone achieve before. "Ah," said Dumbledore, "that is the question, isn't it." He smiled at Percy. "You noticed, I take it, that Professor Quirrell was looking into the Mirror of Erised and seeing only himself _with _the Stone, not how to acquire it?"

Percy nodded. "Something like that. So, what, was it hidden under the floor or something?" He paused. "Or was it _in _the Mirror somehow?" Dumbledore nodded, twinkling, and opened his mouth to explain, but something was off, again, and Percy was barely listening as Dumbledore explained to a fascinated Ron and Neville how the Mirror would only produce the Stone for someone who wanted to _get _it but not actually _use_ it. It sounded clever, hiding the Stone in the mirror, a perfect thing to tell people. Everyone would assume that they couldn't get the Stone simply because they were inadequate, but if you thought about it for a few moments... Percy was thinking of Bill and his tomb-raiding stories. _The treasure's never in the chest - it's always somewhere else, and the chest is booby-trapped_. There might've been a fake, perhaps, in case anyone managed to show really impressive levels of selflessness, but - "No," said Percy, drawing everyone's attention again, "it wasn't there _at all,_ was it!"

Ron looked taken aback. "What?"

Dumbledore raised a curious eyebrow, clearly wondering how Percy had figured this out. Percy, his theory confirmed, exploded indignantly. "_That's _why you and McGonagall kept telling us 'oh don't worry everything's fine' even when everything was obviously not fine! It's not _there!_"

"Astute deduction, Mr. Weasley," said Dumbledore finally, looking mildly surprised but slightly impressed. "I hope you will accept my assurance, this time, that Nicolas Flamel's treasure is indeed much safer than it may have appeared." To Percy's distinct outrage, he smiled benignly. "But you have still won a great victory, for all that the prize you fought for did not exist. Voldemort has been beaten back."

"But he's still out there," said Neville, rather quietly. "He could still come back."

Dumbledore nodded gravely. "Indeed," he said, "but if he should try again, and be beaten back again, and yet again, perhaps he never shall."

Percy made a face. "Fine," he said darkly, "but next time I'm not doing it."

To his great annoyance, Dumbledore just smiled at him, and said, "No one can force you to be a hero, Mr. Weasley," and then drifted away.

* * *

><p><em>June 11, 1992<em>

_(letter delivered by Muggle post) _

_To Hermione Granger_

_Hope this gets to you. I dunno how Muggle post works, I'm having Dean deliver this. _

_On behalf of all the first-year Gryffindors, but especially on behalf of me, because I was the worst:_

_We were stupid and awful. _

_We're sorry. _

_- Ron Weasley_


	36. Summer, 1992

Hermione, being Hermione, passed her end-of-year exams with flying colours, though it cost her a nearly-sleepless week of panic. After that she slept for most of two days, and then Jarek (rolling his eyes) dragged her outside. Ostensibly they were watching Viktor win games of pick-up Quidditch while spectacularly outnumbered, but as Jarek wasn't much more of a fan of broomsticks than Hermione, they mostly played chess and enjoyed the cool onset of Norwegian summer. Chess, Hermione had found, was an unusually engaging pursuit when your chess pieces didn't speak the same native language you did (the ones she was borrowing from Viktor, of course, were Bulgarian).

Headmaster Karkaroff altered her end-of-year score report to give Muggle names for her subjects, so that she could show it to her parents; then she took a Portkey home and waited for her parents at the train station, quite as if she'd just taken a train there. It was still really weird, and horrible, that she was lying outright to her parents, but Hermione had trained herself not to think about it. _It's this or not learn magic at all,_ she told herself sternly. _And if I don't learn magic, I'll probably get murdered. So I have to learn magic._ And that was that, really.

(Her summer, plus or minus some peculiar interruptions, was occupied almost entirely by studying her secondhand, magically repaired Muggle textbooks. She would, after all, need to be prepared for her O-Levels in a few years; her parents would expect nothing less.)

* * *

><p>Elsewhere, Ron and Neville found to their delight and relief that all six of the Gryffindors in their year had passed their exams with surprisingly good grades (Percy gave them a sarcastic comment or three in the general vein of "There's a <em>reason <em>people study, yes"). Neville spent most of the train ride home staring incredulously at his scores, which notably included a 102% Herbology mark, while everyone else argued around him about whether Ron had been given extra credit on his Defense exam for his adventure. Six in a compartment was a sensible number, and they were all friends now, for all that they had little in common. No one wanted to play the ostracization game anymore.

Parvati and Lavender made arrangements to visit one another over the summer, and everyone else exchanged assorted promises to write. Dean and Lavender, who both lived in Muggle houses, exchanged phone numbers, to the puzzled fascination of the rest of the compartment. After some extensive interrogation and counter-interrogation, it was concluded that "Fellytones are sort of like Floo, then!", and everyone giggled for assorted reasons and moved on.

And they all went home from Hogwarts, a little less childish than they had arrived.

* * *

><p>Percy got his perfect OWLs, to absolutely no one's surprise (eleven of them, every subject but Divination). Oliver, who'd only passed Charms, Transfiguration, and Astronomy (he didn't particularly <em>care <em>about anything else), oscillated between congratulations and merciless teasing right up until they boarded the train, to the general amusement of everyone in the vicinity including Percy. Percy would probably normally have been more annoyed, but he was in too good a mood for his best friend's antics to even dent his cheer. He'd heard a rumour that the OWL examination board was going to start keeping exam results until a few weeks into the summer holiday, and he could hardly imagine having to wait so long.

"Swot," Oliver said affectionately, when Percy expressed this concern. Percy rolled his eyes. Their endless argument did not continue for the rest of the train ride, however, because Percy went to the prefects' meeting and failed entirely to return.

(A paranoid individual might have been concerned about this. Oliver, however, knew perfectly well that Percy was involved with a certain blonde Ravenclaw prefect. He also knew that if he mentioned it to the twins - or, for that matter, to anyone who _might potentially _tell the twins - he would get hexed into next century; so he sat and played Snap with Angelina and Alicia and grinned to himself, and said nothing.)

* * *

><p>Augusta Longbottom had tea on alternate Sundays with Minerva McGonagall, a tradition faithfully maintained since they had graduated Hogwarts together (probably the last SlytherinGryffindor friendship to escape the building unscathed, sadly), so she already knew some of what had happened over the year with her grandson.

Minerva had told her, with some fascination, all about the transformation of the Gryffindor first years in the wake of Hermione Granger's departure. They had begun as a fragmented bunch of slackers who didn't get along, and by Christmas they had mutated into a stable, successful mutual support system. That mutual support system, astonishingly, had gotten them through their first-year exams with a higher class average than Minerva said she had seen in her House since the class-of-only-one-student that was grim Jonathan Fawley, who'd graduated in the spring of 1983.

Even having been so warned, Augusta could not help but be a little startled to see Neville smiling brightly as he bid his friends a good summer, and holding his exam scores in a way that suggested he was not ashamed of them. His smile went away quickly when his friends left, and he still stammered when he spoke, and she saw him jump like a frightened rabbit when someone jostled him accidentally; but progress was progress, she supposed.

* * *

><p>Theodore Nott bid a vague farewell to his various classmates, or more accurately to Draco. Daphne was a <em>girl<em> even if she didn't have any brothers and would inherit her father's wealth, and the rest of the House were basically all Draco's minions. So Draco was the only one that mattered, really. Then he picked up his trunk and paced off quietly. He bowed politely to his father, ignoring the rush of other children jumping into their parents' arms (purebloods do not _hug _each other in _public_, ugh). Sensibly enough, Theo was expecting to be asked about his year. What he was _not _expecting was to be greeted by a rather alarming glower.

"Er - " he began hesitantly, almost instinctively stepping backwards again, frightened.

"Move," snapped old Jarred Nott, a command which pulled Theo into arm's reach as sharply as if he'd been Summoned. His father had never been particularly warm and supportive as a parent, and age (he was a contemporary of Abraxas Malfoy) had not helped; still, Theo wasn't used to this level of irritation. His father was angry about something.

He didn't get to ask until he was done coughing unhappily and trying not to vomit; practice didn't make Side-Along-Apparition significantly less unpleasant, at twelve. A house-elf handed him a cup of tea, and he drank it gratefully, leaning against the banister of the grand staircase while his father paced around looking angry. After that, he spent about five minutes trying to locate his courage (there was a reason the Sorting Hat had not offered him Gryffindor, he thought wryly). Then Theo said cautiously, "Father, what is wrong?"

What followed was an extended rant on several disparate subjects, all of which were contributing to his father's bad mood. He'd had to have his ring reforged _three times _since Halloween, he kept melting the bloody thing; Gringotts was refusing to perform the ennoblement ceremony even though all of the Potters (may they rest in eternal torment) had been dead for ten years, and it was ridiculous, because the Notts had more money than half the Noble Houses and Jarred was tired of Lord Greengrass making subtle jabs at his lack of title; speaking of which, bloody Greengrass was still refusing marriage contracts for his daughters to _everyone_, even the Malfoys; and he couldn't even complain about any of these things to Abraxas and Arcturus, because they were both ridiculously contagious with dragonpox and no one was allowed near them, which was probably Cassie's fault -

(Theo had hesitantly interjected at this point, lost, to ask who Cassie was, since he knew that Lord Arcturus Black's wife had been named Melania, and moreover was dead; his father had clarified that he was referring to Cassiopeia Black, Arcturus's cousin, who invented curses as a hobby and as a rule could be categorically blamed for all catastrophic magical incidents which even tangentially involved any Blacks)

- and furthermore Lucius Malfoy was extremely smug because he knew he was about to inherit and it sort of made Jarred want to hit him repeatedly with Bone-Shattering Hexes until he shut up, which was a problem because Lucius was his nephew and that was not a sensible thing to be doing to people you were related to; and Arthur Weasley was actually getting a great deal of support for his stupid Muggle Protection Act, which was ridiculous and he would just assassinate the filthy Muggle-loving blood traitor if Ignatius Prewett wouldn't probably get him arrested; and speaking of Prewett, he's probably sleeping with Cassie and that was just _unutterably irritating _because you can't call scandal properly on Cassie Black, it's just _not physically possible_, you end up dangling over the side of a volcano somewhere pondering your life choices -

(Theo didn't like that mental image at all, but it was significantly preferable to picturing anything involving sex and Ignatius Prewett, who was pushing ninety, so he refrained from commenting)

- and on top of all of that, he'd just gotten a letter from the Potions master at Durmstrang, congratulating him on the performance of his cousin's granddaughter, who had apparently placed in the top of her class on her third-year exams, which was _ridiculous_, because his cousin was dead and all his cousins' kids were dead and he had not at any point been informed that there was a kid going to Durmstrang, and nevertheless he had felt a sort of pride, and really, everything was ridiculous and no, he wasn't angry at Theo in particular, he just wished Theo wasn't _twelve _because that was really too young to be expected to deal with any of this. _  
><em>

Theo had absorbed all that, and said, "Well - that last one we can deal with, right? Write to the kid and find out what's going on?" It _would _be cool to have a cousin at Durmstrang. Or ... whatever you would call your dad's cousin's granddaughter. Cousin once removed? Whatever.

Jarred Nott took a deep breath. "Yes," he said, "yes, we can do that."

* * *

><p>"Mail for you, Dean," said his mother, handing him an envelope in exchange for the plate of toast he'd just handed her.<p>

It was neatly addressed, _  
><em>

_Ronald Weasley, c/o Dean Thomas, _followed by their address. Dean was glad, suddenly, that he'd remember to put a return address on the letter he'd mailed for Ron. So he called Lavender. "Hey, Hermione wrote Ron back, do you have any idea how to hire a post owl?" he asked once he'd got hold of her, and gone through the ritual exchange of small talk and _how's your summer going?_s.

"Um ... I think Gringotts will do it?" Lavender offered. "I remember seeing a sign for that when we were exchanging money, I think."

So he'd caught a bus, when he had a spare Saturday, and paid the goblins a Sickle to mail the letter to the Burrow.

* * *

><p><em>June 28, 1992<em>

_Mr. Weasley,_

_An apology does me no good, you know. It cannot convince my parents to allow me to return to Hogwarts. I do not think I would even want to return, were I allowed; if nothing else, being forced to find a different school has at least provided me with classmates more pleasant than you. _

_Still, thank you._

_Hermione J. Granger_

* * *

><p>(When Ron received this letter, he stared at it for a long time.)<p>

* * *

><p><em>June 30, 1992<em>

_Miss Hermione Nott: _

_It has recently come to my attention that I and my son are not the only living members of the House of Nott, but that we also count you - descended of my late cousin Alfred - among our number. I congratulate you on your apparently-excellent academic performance at Durmstrang Institute, but I must say that I am deeply offended that you have not previously seen fit to inform me of your existence. As head of your House I insist that you attend us at the Nott Estate in Bristol, at tea-time on the 5th of July (this coming Sunday), to enlighten us as to your history. _

_I expect to see you then. _

_Jarred Nott, patriarch of the House of Nott _

* * *

><p>Hermione very nearly panicked when she read the letter from Jarred Nott, which had been delivered by a cruel-beaked, sharp-taloned owl that looked deeply offended by her failure to offer it an owl treat, despite the fact that she did not in fact own an owl and did not have any owl treats. Fortunately, it flew off before she could determine whether she was supposed to write a response, and she decided it probably would be best not to. That hadn't been an <em>invitation <em>so much as an _order__, _so a response seemed almost redundant.

She spent the next several hours fabricating a story involving one of her professors, visiting from Germany on research, inviting her to tea, which she delivered to her parents with her fingers crossed that they wouldn't demand to meet the professor in question. Fortunately, they were quite convinced of the acceptability of Durmstrang Institute after their meeting with Headmaster Karkaroff the previous winter, and having now seen her return home entirely unharmed with good grades.

The next source of panic would naturally have been _how to get there_, but fortunately, Hermione had already spent a considerable amount of time, after her unpleasant first experience with Portkeys, researching magical travel in Britain and elsewhere. So that Sunday, she summoned the Knight Bus, and politely asked it to take her to the Nott Estate in Bristol. The driver made her repeat this several times before he believed her; evidently delivering children to pureblood mansions was not something they were typically called upon to do. But they _could _do it, and she paid them in Sickles left over from the previous winter's shopping for books in Diagon Alley, and she clung to a wall and rehearsed her story in her head.

* * *

><p>Theo paced around by the door; it was polite to answer in person for anyone who even remotely mattered, after all. His father was waiting in the sitting room, reading genealogy books and muttering to himself. Theo, meanwhile, was endlessly curious about this mysterious cousin from Durmstrang. Hopefully she'd be like Daphne - dignified and intelligent. She had to be intelligent, if she was doing so well in her classes, right? But then she could also be like Tracey, who was brilliant but sort of unpleasant to be around, thanks to her extremely annoying habit of correcting everyone's grammar all the time.<p>

Merlin forbid she was anything like the rest of the Slytherin girls, who followed Pansy around like little ducklings, hanging on her every word just because she'd told them she was probably going to marry Draco, which wasn't even _true_, it wasn't like they had a proper contract or anything. Nobody did, the Greengrasses had thrown off the whole system because nobody that was anybody wanted to sign anything until they knew who was going to get Daphne and Astoria. They were unquestionably at the top of the list, especially now that Susan Bones had been confirmed for blood-traitor (she'd been hanging around with _Muggleborns_, even though she even had Ernie Macmillan in Hufflepuff with her). Ugh, everything was a mess.

Considering this train of thought, it is not entirely shocking that when he opened the door and encountered _Hermione Granger, _Theo jumped about a foot and made a rather undignified high-pitched yelping noise. _Granger _was a _Muggleborn_, from _Gryffindor_, she was the one who'd gotten withdrawn after the Troll Incident on Halloween, and Slytherin had celebrated because she'd spent the first two months of school showing them up in all their classes and they'd all hated her, she was _definitely _not _related _to him! "What the _bloody he _- "

Granger took several very rapid steps and got very close to him. "Mister Nott," she said quietly, and very seriously, "I have recently earned a higher than perfect score in the third-year examination for Battle Magic at Durmstrang Institute by successfully performing a class-four Immolation Curse. I do not mean you or your father any harm, and I have no intention whatsoever of even slightly inconveniencing you. All I want is to continue attending school, if you are so spectacularly stupid as to ruin that for me, _you will not enjoy my revenge_. Is that clear?"

Theo's mouth, previously prepared to spew a large number of insults followed by a demand that she cease her use of his family name immediately, snapped quite firmly shut. He'd grown up with ex-Death Eaters making up a large percentage of his social circle; he knew a credible threat when he saw one. He _could _tell his father, get her expelled from Durmstrang. She'd probably even get killed in short order if he did that, because nobody cared what happened to Muggleborns, especially not ones that didn't even go to Hogwarts. But he knew enough to know that Immolation Curses of class three and higher were conditional; you could cast them some time in advance, and trigger them without a wand or without even being anywhere near the person.

If she wasn't lying (which she wasn't showing any signs of), and she wasn't stupid (which he had been forced to admit, sometime last September, that she was not), she'd probably already cast it on him. Which meant that getting her killed would probably get _him _killed.

So he nodded.

Granger - _Hermione, _he'd have to call her by her bloody first name if she was going to use Nott for a surname - smiled brightly, quite as if she had not just threatened him with a curse he was fairly certain was illegal in Britain and some 38 other countries. She looked so _pleased _with herself, it was exactly that same stupid grin that she got when she answered a question perfectly in Potions, and there was no Professor Snape here to wipe it off her face by taking away points for being annoying. He was going to get her back for this. He _was. _Just ... not right now. Because right now she was scary.

(He sort of wished he'd gone to Durmstrang. If it could make _her _scary, it was doing something right.)

* * *

><p>In August of 1992, three of the eldest fixtures of the pureblood community died of dragonpox: Lord Abraxas Malfoy, Lord Arcturus Black, and Cassiopeia Black. There were huge articles about it in every newspaper, in which everyone competed to sound sufficiently sympathetic that none of the nobles would hex them senseless.<p>

The transfer of power in the Malfoy family was smooth and barely noticeable; Lucius Malfoy took over for his father, and organized the funeral, and it was business as usual from there. They weren't significantly different people, as far as most people were concerned. The bigger concern, among the Noble families, was the House of Black. The only one of Arcturus' direct descendants still alive was Sirius Black, currently in Azkaban for a life sentence. This implied that power defaulted to the next line over, Cassie's brother's descendants - which was just Bellatrix Lestrange (also in Azkaban), Andromeda Tonks (disowned), and Narcissa Malfoy, in that order.

A spectacular legal battle immediately sprung into existence between Andromeda Tonks and Narcissa Malfoy, on account of the somewhat unclear rules about informal disowning and inheritance. This immediately generated a flurry of arguments between the blood purists and their opponents about whether it was remotely acceptable that Andromeda had been burned off the family tapestry for marrying Ted Tonks. _That _dragged Arthur Weasley's Muggle Protection Act into the spotlight, since one of its major components was a provision for the legal recognition of Muggle parents of magical children as being actually, y'know, _people_, and of course that horribly offended all the blood purists, and everything got even more complicated.

Then Lucius Malfoy and Arthur Weasley got into a fist-fight in Flourish & Blotts, and somebody got pictures, and then _that _was all over the _Daily Prophet. _The subsequent scramble on all sides to downplay this event buried the original problem under enormous amounts of paperwork. After several months of politicians yelling at each other, in early August's Wizengamot session, Lord Edward Greengrass dryly suggested that maybe they should just ask Sirius Black, who technically was Lord Black even though he was in prison. This suggestion garnered universal agreement and much sage nodding (_yes, of course, we should have thought of that_).

Andromeda and Narcissa exchanged extremely awkward glances. Andromeda didn't want to talk to Sirius because he'd betrayed the Potters; Narcissa didn't want to talk to Sirius because he'd personally killed several of her Hogwarts classmates during the War. Neither of them felt even slightly confident that he'd be receptive to that sort of inquiry.

"That's interesting," said the smirking Unspeakable. Eventually someone made a formal request that the Aurors ask, and in the middle of August, DMLE Director Amelia Bones personally walked down into the bowels of Azkaban to inquire.

"Black," she snapped, kicking the bars of his cell. The metal rang oddly in the Dementor-iced air; it was still cold down here, even though the Dementors were avoiding the shining silver light given off by Director Bones' Patronus.

Sirius looked up, eyes slightly unfocused, from where he'd been staring at an apparently arbitrary section of wall. "What?" His voice was scratchy with dust and disuse.

"Formal request," she said, ignoring the desire to punch him repeatedly until he died (_you were the spy, they trusted you, Edgar and Helen died because of you_), "that you decide who is to act as regent of the House of Black, which you cannot head while serving a life sentence."

Sirius blinked a few times. Then he rasped, "I take it my grandfather is dead, then."

"Obviously. Forgive me if I do not mourn."

An odd expression crossed his face; Amelia had trouble identifying it. Sirius asked, "I can pick anybody?" Yes; technically, it didn't even need to be a blood relative. Amelia had been given the request in terms of "pick between Narcissa and Andromeda", but legally that wasn't actually the question. (And she was nothing if not compliant with the law.) She nodded. Sirius considered that.

He seemed, oddly, to be functioning relatively normally, if slowly. People usually went crazy down here within five years ... but Sirius had _already _been crazy. She'd been present when he was dragged in here ten years ago, laughing hysterically and flinging around wandless blasting curses. The curses had stopped when he'd got into proximity of the dementors - he likely wouldn't be capable now even if he were released - but the laughter hadn't. It haunted her, occasionally.

The laughter was gone now, drained out of him like the blood that failed to warm his pale skin. Sirius said, "Andromeda, then."

Amelia blinked. She had genuinely been expecting Sirius to name a Death Eater - or, cough, an _ex-_Death Eater, one of those who'd been "Imperiused" - or at least Narcissa, who was married to one. Why Andromeda? Oh, well, not her problem. She had her answer and she could go, far away from the reminder that Susan was orphaned because someone from the Order had given Edgar's schedule to the Death Eaters, because Edgar had trusted the wrong person, just like James and Lily Potter had. "Right. Thanks."

She was about to turn and go when Sirius spoke again. "Don't suppose you could get me a drink or something?" he said, his voice strained but somehow still weirdly flippant. Like he thought he deserved to pretend to be James Potter. "All I ever get is water."

(_Little brother, little brother, why you, Susan would have loved you so much._) "Go to hell," spat Amelia, and she turned and left. As fast as she could walk without running, because she didn't want to hear him talk anymore. Not another word. It didn't work, though. Over the sound of her boots clicking on the stone, the prisoners groaning and whining around her, the whistle of the wind, she could still hear his answer.

"_I'm already there!_"


	37. Meet the Littlest Weasley

"Come on, come on!"

Spectacularly behind schedule, but miraculously not yet late enough to miss the train, the Weasleys sped through King's Cross, a gaggle of red hair and stress. "Hurry up," their mother was saying, chivvying them along with their trolleys and trunks and pets. Ron had Scabbers safely in his pocket, but Hermes was not entirely pleased about the hurry, and was fluttering about unhappily as his cage was jostled about. The twins were telling Ginny outrageous lies about the Sorting Hat, which Percy and Ron had stopped trying to bother discrediting; her nervousness seemed to still be less prominent than her excitement, and she'd find out the truth soon enough.

They got through the barrier in such a hurried jumble that Percy tripped over Ron and sent them both sprawling, and sent Scabbers squeaking off at a panicked run. They could only vaguely hear the snickering of Fred and George as they dumped their things in the loading pile and scampered off into the crowd without further ado. Percy scrambled to his feet, ears burning, and dusted himself off; Ginny, giggling quietly, helped Ron up. "What's so funny?" he grumbled, red-faced, as they dragged their own things over to the pile. She pointed over his shoulder. Percy had, in his attempt to stride away purposefully, walked directly into one of the other prefects, a blonde girl who was now giggling at him as he rather shamefacedly followed her to the front of the train. "Oh," snorted Ron.

"C'mon c'mon, we've got to get on the train!" said Ginny, tugging on his sleeve as the whistle blew. Ron followed, and only after they'd joined Neville and Seamus in a compartment did he remember that he'd been planning not to let her sit with him. After all, he hadn't been allowed to sit with _his _older brothers on the train; Ginny ought to make her own friends. But by the time he'd opened his mouth to shoo his little sister away, she'd read Seamus' T-shirt (which was bright green and had back-to-back yellow K's on it, the logo of the Kenmare Kestrels). Then Ginny was off at a thousand miles an hour about the Kestrels' Keeper and Seeker, who had recently landed themselves in St. Mungo's with all three of the Ballycastle Bats' Chasers after a reportedly-spectacular bar fight, and "he was the only Keeper who consistently blocks Gwenog Jones, how's the reserve?" and "I bet you anything Holyhead wins the league this year," and so on.

Ron blinked, and sat down next to Neville as Seamus talked enthusiastically about the odds that Barry Ryan would recover in time for the second half of the season, and decided it wasn't worth it. "Neville," he said, opting to ignore the conversation about Quidditch (as he was wont to do whenever the discussion was about any team other than his beloved Cannons), "how was your summer, mate?"

Neville smiled a bit nervously. "Ehm ... pretty good, actually? Gran was pleased with my exam results, so she let me explore the greenhouse properly once I'd got my summer homework done." He scratched ruefully at his left hand with his right, showing Ron a still-red scar running across the back of his hand. "Turns out my great-uncle Algie's got fanged geraniums in there. He has some really nice fire lilies, too, though, and he let me help trim some of them!" Ron had no idea why lilies would be worth getting bitten by plants, no matter how pretty they were, but he figured he'd take Neville's word for it.

Besides, he had a question. "Isn't your great-uncle Algie the one who dropped you out a third-floor window?"

"Er ... yeah?" said Neville, puzzled.

Ginny interrupted herself mid-sentence to say, "He _what_?", which made Seamus break into snickering. They had been in the middle of talking about one of the Ballycastle Chasers' "fantastic" skill at knocking people off their brooms, which made her indignant interruption sound extremely funny.

Neville seemed a bit surprised at her vehemence. "Erm ... well, for the longest time my whole family thought I was a Squib," he explained, "and so they were always trying to find proof one way or the other, and, this one time Uncle Algie was dangling me over a balcony and he got distracted and dropped me, and I bounced! Everyone was really pleased, and he bought me Trevor."

This story had sounded strange the first time Neville told it, and it sounded even stranger now that Ron thought about it again, especially with Ginny sitting there looking horrified. "But," he said slowly, "wouldn't you have _died _if you _had _been a Squib?"

Neville frowned, thinking. "Oh," he said, "yeah, I guess so?"

"But that's terrible!" burst out Ginny, evidently baffled that Neville wasn't indignant on his own behalf. "Squibs are people too, just like Muggles are! They should've tried something that wouldn't have _killed you_, if they really wanted to know that badly! This great-uncle of yours sounds like a terrible person!"

"Er," said Neville, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly, "well, see, technically since he's my grandfather's brother, he'd be Lord Longbottom if I died or if I was a Squib. And, um, purebloods, you know, they tend to be really ... " He made a vague, helpless gesture. " ... he figured it'd be better if I died, a lot of them think like that, you know? Like being a Squib is literally a fate worse than death, and - and it kind of is, isn't it?"

Ginny subsided, frowning. Like many purebloods, she had never seriously considered the question of what her life might have been like if she weren't magical. "Well ... I mean ... yeah, but ... but murder is still murder," she muttered, looking distinctly unnerved. Ron felt sort of the same way; they had always been taught that everyone was equally important, that being nonmagical (like Muggles) or having nonmagical parents (like Muggleborns) didn't make you _not a person; _that was one of the lessons their father had drilled into them ever since they were old enough to understand it. That was what he was having a fight in the Ministry over with Malfoy. But ... Squibs _were _awfully prone to throwing themselves off bridges and things, it was one of those horribly depressing things you found out about when there was an article in the _Prophet _about it when you were nine, and then after that you tried really hard to _not think about _it ...

Seamus was looking at all of them with an expression of great bemusement. "Purebloods are so _weird_," he said.

* * *

><p>Percy measured his steps slower so that Penelope, who was quite a bit shorter than he was, could keep pace, and smiled as he heard Hagrid yelling for the first years. "My little sister's starting this year," he said happily, "that's all of us!"<p>

"Oh, wow," said Penelope, "that must be really weird for your mum, she hasn't not had any kids around since, what, before your brother Bill was born?" Percy nodded. "He was Head Boy when we were second years, right, so that makes him ... twenty-one? I wonder if there's studies on what the average is, you know, what the average split is between the time the eldest child is born and the youngest goes to Hogwarts ... it's probably doesn't _quite _correlate with the average number of kids ... " Penelope had only one sibling, a little brother who was just five, and had always been fascinated by the enormous Weasley family - though, of course, she was fascinated by almost everything else in the world, too.

Percy nodded. "I couldn't tell if Mum was really excited or really sad, actually," he admitted, and then after a moment's thought, offered, "maybe a little of both? Ginny's over the moon, though," he added, smiling. "She's been whining about not getting to come to Hogwarts since before she was old enough to pronounce it, and when Ron started - " He stopped very suddenly, eyes wide, and came to a halt in the middle of the path, staring at the carriages that performed the comforting ritual, every year, of ferrying them to the school while the first-years boated over the lake. Of course he knew what he was looking at, he'd gotten an O on his Care of Magical Creatures OWL, but that didn't really restore the sense of pleasant routine that had so abruptly deserted him.

"What's wrong?" asked Penelope in surprise, her faint glazed expression (the one that indicated she was half listening and half consulting the library in her head) disappearing and being replaced with one of concern.

In a very quiet voice, Percy said, "I can see the thestrals."

* * *

><p>Percy was still very quiet when he rejoined the Gryffindors at the table in the Great Hall; mercifully, the twins were busy making faces at Ginny, who appeared to be glaring at them from the vicinity of the High Table, mouthing angrily <em>it's just a hat!<em>, and apparently fascinating the blond boy next to her, who had the sort of faint, permanently astonished expression that marked him for Muggle-raised, and was looking at her as if she were a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, or possibly a dragon. Ron wasn't paying attention, either; he was busy having a whispered conversation with Neville (something about how he'd lost Scabbers on the platform and somehow found him again in the entrance hall). Oliver noticed, though.

Oliver asked quietly, "You alright, Perce?", and Percy considered the question seriously before nodding. Yes, he would be fine. He probably wasn't going to tell his parents he could see thestrals now, though._ Bill and Charlie can see them_, he thought, _and they always say they wish they couldn't. _

The Sorting seemed to go on forever; absently, Percy counted the students, and noted with interest that there were fewer than there had been last year. Hadn't Professor Vector said something about that last year, in Arithmancy class, when they'd been talking about population analysis? This Halloween marked the eleven-year anniversary of the end of the war; so _this _year's group would be much smaller, the few kids who'd been born in the very last year of the war, widely considered the worst. But next year there'd probably be something like twice as many.

This year that meant fewer new Gryffindors, he supposed, but that was alright, so long as one of them was Ginny; and it wasn't like the bright little chatterbox had any chance of belonging somewhere else. She was practically Bill in miniature, according to almost everyone, and he'd been a _classic _ideal Gryffindor.

This thought in mind, Percy was quite puzzled when Ginny's time under the Hat lengthened. The twins seemed to be having the same thought: they looked over at him, inquiring. _What's she doing still up there?_, that look asked. Ron, however, had a pensive expression that suggested he wasn't confused at all. Percy gave his youngest brother a curious glance. Ron made a face.

(Ron was thinking about his own Sorting. _I wonder, _he was thinking, _if it's offering her Slytherin, like it did me. _And if she said yes, what would he do? She'd still be his little sister, of course, but - )

"GRYFFINDOR!"

( - moral dilemma over. Thank Merlin.)

Ginny sped over to the table beaming widely; the twins ruffled her hair; and everyone forgot about it.

* * *

><p><em>Dear Tom,<em>

_The Hat tried to put me in Slytherin, does that make me a bad person? _

**Of course not, dear heart. There are good Slytherins just like there are evil Gryffindors, even if the world likes to pretend there aren't. Let me tell you a story ... **


	38. Interlude: Harry James Potter

_"If Voldemort is still alive in some form, Severus, _

_and I think it would be unrealistic of us to assume that he is not,_

_... then so, too, is Harry Potter."_

* * *

><p>This was not an inaccurate guess; Albus Dumbledore's guesses are rarely wrong.<p>

It was, however, perhaps more _optimistic _than it ought to have been.

Because there _is _a Harry Potter, and Harry Potter isn't _dead,_ exactly; that bit's true enough. If you go to Godric's Hollow, what you would find there if you could pass through the Fidelius Charm isn't a _ghost_. It's a little more solid; it resists being walked through, like very thick fog. It has colour; it has jet-black hair and bright, too-wide green eyes. It can speak, after a fashion. It could possess people, had it the willpower or the inspiration to try.

But it isn't _alive, _either, not really. It doesn't age; it is forever a year old. And if you asked anyone, anyone at all, whether they thought this was _life, _they would all say no. It doesn't live.

It only wafts about, forever crying in its faint, high-pitched voice:

"_Mama?" _


	39. Welcome (?) To Ravenclaw

Penelope Clearwater had lost the draw.

She had no idea why anyone thought this draw needed to be performed with Exploding Snap cards, but that was Hogwarts for you.

At any rate, regardless of the deplorable state of her eyebrows, she was now the prefect in charge of the new Ravenclaw students. That meant she was in charge of chivvying them all up the stairs to the seventh floor ("Which requires anywhere from two to nine staircases," she warned on the way up), and introducing them to the Tower knocker. In the morning, she'd be in charge of handing out schedules and being sure to point out Professor Flitwick: it was vitally important that no Ravenclaw student ever be heard to say something so stupid as "Which one's Flitwick?" on the first day of classes. Apparently, despite the Charms professor having wispy grey hair and more wrinkles than a Kneazle, first-years still occasionally mistook him for a student due to his height. Penelope was personally of the opinion that anyone so stupid did not deserve to be a Ravenclaw, but they had to keep up appearances. And of course, being the supervisory prefect meant that tomorrow night she'd have to show them how to get into the Ravenclaw private library behind the statue of Rowena.

It did _not _mean that she was responsible for doing anything _else_.

She did not have to repeat herself. She did not have to give directions. She certainly did not have to answer the riddles for them. Rather, Penelope told them briskly, "If you don't know the answer to the riddle, I cannot help you," because you were supposed to figure it out yourself or with a friend. It wasn't the job of the older students to tell you. You eventually started to see the patterns in the answers, like learning a new language. By sixth or seventh year many Ravenclaws could answer the riddles without even really giving them any conscious thought, which never failed to impress the younger students. That effect didn't _work _properly if you just _told _the younger students the answers, so there was actually an official House rule that you weren't allowed to tell anyone the answer to the riddle if they weren't in your own class year.

She explained this very sternly. She also explained to the anxious-looking first-years the unofficial corollary to the rule, which was that you really shouldn't ask an older student for help with _anything_, because in Ravenclaw you were expected to be smart enough to figure it out yourself.

It did not occur to Penelope, though perhaps it should have, that there were some things that eleven-year-olds really _weren't _capable of dealing with themselves. Sometimes there were things you really oughtn't try to make them handle alone. But she had spent too long absorbed in the culture that everyone in Ravenclaw was self-sufficient - they were proud of it. They exulted in it, really, with their carefully cultivated smug expressions and calculated cliqueism. So when Penelope saw little blonde Luna Lovegood sitting quietly in a corner, not talking to anyone, patching together a Charms textbook with Spellotape and trying not to cry, it simply didn't occur to her that anyone ought to do something.

It also didn't occur to Penelope that this was why little Luna Lovegood spent less and less time in the common room as time wore on. Penelope wasn't thinking about it very hard; she had NEWT classes all of a sudden, and like any proper Ravenclaw (or Percy, bless him), she was taking as many of them as her schedule allowed. She was busy, and had never learned to pay attention to such things. Penelope, therefore, simply assumed that Luna must be having trouble with the passwords, when she thought about it, and then dismissed the thought in favour of homework. She might have done something, had she known, because Penelope Clearwater was not a _bad _person; but though she was, perhaps, the most observant of the six Ravenclaw prefects, this was not a high bar to reach. She did not notice; and she did nothing.

The House of Ravenclaw went on cheerfully mocking strange little Luna with her bottlecap necklaces and her mismatched shoes and her funny ideas.

And so Luna Lovegood took to avoiding every part of the castle frequented by the members of Ravenclaw House; and eventually this took her to a run-down bathroom that no one ever went to. There, she could do her homework without having ink dumped on it, and read her books in peace, and make jewelry, and write letters to her father.

(_Dear Daddy, I am learning lots. Professor Flitwick, our Head of House, is very nice, and he says he remembers you set him on fire by accident once. I think he has grown his beard back fine since then, though. I made you a chain for your glasses so you don't keep losing them. Tell Mum happy birthday for me when you go to see her this week. Love, Luna.) _

She didn't mind Myrtle, who kept the others away. Nor did Myrtle mind her presence, once she'd had a few days to get used to it.

Myrtle was a Ravenclaw outcast, too, after all; they got along.


	40. A Distinct Shortage of Celebrities

"Guys! Guys, wait up!"

Ginny would have banged her head against the wall in frustration if they weren't outside, at the sound of Colin Creevey's high-pitched voice behind them. Not that she didn't like him, he was a good kid and it wasn't _his _fault he didn't know anything about magic, but, well, they were halfway to the greenhouses, where they'd be having Herbology with the Ravenclaws, and he had only just made it out the front doors. "Do you think," Ginny asked Demelza Robbins, who was walking beside her, "that he'll _ever_ figure out that he could be on time for things if he didn't keep following Lockhart around?"

Demelza said hesitantly, "Probably not?", in a voice which suggested she was a little confused about her roommate's annoyance. Demelza would probably have been joining in Colin's quest to photographically document every second of Gilderoy Lockhart's existence, had Ginny not kept forcibly dragging her to class. _Honestly_, did no one have any sense? She'd been impressed too, of course, she'd been swooning like everyone else, but Tom had set her straight (_Dearest Ginevra, you ought to be better than that_) and she was now, apparently, the only sane person in her class year. Or possibly in the entire female half of the school and then some. Colin had only barely caught up by the time they reached the greenhouses, and Demelza only managed to about half-way dim her excitement as she said, "Did you get any good pictures, Colin?"

"Oh, yeah!" beamed Colin breathlessly. "I have Professor Lockhart at breakfast, and walking up the stairs, and talking to Draco Malfoy, and talking to Professor McGonagall, and - "

"Did you get any pictures of him without his toupee?" inquired a curious voice that Ginny thought sounded vaguely familiar, interrupting Colin's tirade. As Demelza and Colin were blinking in startled confusion, Ginny turned around. Standing behind her, fiddling with what looked like a half-finished string of Butterbeer bottle caps, was a blonde girl that Ginny recognized as the only daughter of the wizard who lived a few miles from the Burrow, in that funny chess-piece-shaped tower. "He hides fish under it, you know, that's why Mrs. Norris follows him around all the time."

Approximately thirty seconds passed, in baffled silence. Lockhart didn't have a toupee, right? Colin and Demelza were exchanging confused glances, clearly both unsure of how to respond. Once the silence had gone on long enough, Ginny, grinning widely, said, "You just actually got them to shut up!" She applauded, only about half-sarcastically. "You are my new favourite person. Luna, right?" Luna nodded, a faint smile creeping across her face. Ginny held out her hand. "I'm Ginny Weasley, and these nutcases are Demelza Robbins and Colin Creevey. Demelza, Colin, I believe I've just discovered the only other sane person in this room, except maybe Professor Sprout," who indeed was in the middle of lecturing a pair of Ravenclaw boys who were arguing about whether Lockhart would sign their books since they'd missed the Diagon Alley signing. "Say hello to Luna Lovegood."

"Um ... hello," said Demelza, as Ginny and Luna shook hands. Colin seemed as if he were entirely too confused to speak.

Disagreements about the quantity of hair and/or competence owned by their Defense Professor notwithstanding, Luna turned out to be an excellent choice for a fourth member of their Herbology group.

* * *

><p>"He can't even handle <em>pixies!<em>" complained Ron, throwing up his hands in disgust as they left the Defense classroom. "I _told _you he's useless! I bet Hermione's smarter than he is!"

"I think _you__'re _smarter than he is," pointed out Neville, rubbing his ear ruefully. He had a reddened bite mark where a pixie had ducked his attempt to grab it and latched itself to his ear. Ron had managed to direct the five of them in such a way as to corner the pixies and herd them back into their cage with Impediment Jinxes, but it had not been a task without injury for anyone (except Seamus, who had a surprisingly agile dodge). _  
><em>

Ron laughed. "Yeah, okay, point."

Parvati sniffed. "He was just trying to test us," she said haughtily, "and we did fine, didn't we?"

"Yeah, I'm sure he wouldn't've made us do anything really _dangerous_," agreed Lavender.

Dean said dryly, "Both of your speaking privileges are revoked until you stop having a crush on our Defense Professor."

Ron, Neville, and Seamus all giggled most of the way to their next class, with Parvati and Lavender glaring indignantly at them.

* * *

><p><em>Dear Tom,<em>

_This is awful. Everyone spends all their time going on and on about Lockhart, how am I supposed to convince anyone I'm any good at anything if they're all busy obsessing about this gigantic prat? No one pays any attention to me, not even my friends! It'd almost be nice to have another celebrity around, just so he wasn't getting ALL the attention.  
><em>

**_Almost? _**

_Well, if there was another one he'd probably be just as annoying as Lockhart. I mean, everyone always says he's such a hero, but he doesn't actually act like one in real life - Seamus Finnegan says he let loose a bunch of pixies in the second-years' class, and ran off instead of helping. Are all "heroes" like that? _

**_Most celebrities are not really heroes, dear Ginevra. They do not deserve your interest. _**

_So, do you suppose that if the Potters were alive, they'd be just as - _

**_Who? _**

* * *

><p>"We <em>actually <em>fly on _broomsticks?"_ said Colin rather shrilly as they arrived at the field for the first of their broomstick lessons. They'd be having that lesson with the Hufflepuff first years. Normally the doubles schedules were the same every year, having been worked out hundreds of years ago. Gryffindors would have Potions and broomstick lessons with the Slytherins, Herbology and History of Magic with the Hufflepuffs, Astronomy and Charms with the Ravenclaws, and they'd have Transfiguration and Defense Against the Dark Arts in single houses. But this year it'd been changed, because of the incident in last year's first broomstick-riding class. So now they were having Herbology with Ravenclaw and Charms with Slytherin, because the schedule had had to be shuffled to accommodate having broomstick lessons with the Hufflepuffs instead. (Ron was very proud of himself for causing this.) "Ginny, _seriously?_ You're not just putting me on? I mean, once you told me about Floo, I figured broomsticks were just a _joke_ - " _  
><em>

"Yeah, no, we really do fly on broomsticks," said Ginny, giving her friends a puzzled look. Demelza had looked almost as confused, which was odd, since Ginny could have _sworn _she'd shown them her copy of _Which Broomstick? _at some point. "Were you guys even _listening _when I explained about Quidditch, or were you busy staring at Lockhart?"

"Um, probably that second thing," said Demelza apologetically.

Ginny sighed, and decided that an extended argument was probably not worth it, since Madam Hooch was now yelling at them to line up and pick a broomstick. "Hold out your right hand," the flying instructor barked, "and say, 'UP!', like you mean it."

The air was at once filled with cries of "Up!" and sometimes "Hey, it worked!" and (much more frequently) "Why isn't this working?", which was shortly followed by at least three people in Hufflepuff saying "Diggory says - ", which Ginny decided to ignore in favor of making sure none of her classmates got themselves hurt like Neville Longbottom had last year. Demelza, surprisingly, had gotten her broom into her hand nearly as fast as Ginny had, although she'd said earlier she'd never flown one; Ginny grinned at her. Colin, however, looked _extremely _nervous. This did not improve even once he, and everyone else, had managed to mount his broom. The poor kid looked as if he might faint. "It'll be fine, Colin," said Ginny as reassuringly as she could, "nobody's gotten _really _hurt flying a broom at Hogwarts since, like, forever. Neville only broke his wrist - "

"He _did_?" squeaked Colin, his eyes wide.

Okay, so that had not been a good choice of reassuring phrases. "Yeah, but Madam Pomfrey can fix that kind of thing in seconds - Eeep!" Ginny almost dropped her broom as she noticed that Madam Hooch was standing less than a foot away from her, giving her a Sharp Look. Clearly, the instructor had been trying to get her attention for some time. "Sorry, Madam Hooch!"

It transpired that Ginny was not distributing her weight correctly, but rather was sitting much too far back on the broomstick, as if she thought she were twice her own size. "Um," said Ginny. She glanced at Demelza, who appeared to be trying _very hard _not to accidentally insult anyone while being completely delighted that she'd not needed any correction. "In my defense, I learned this by _watching _Charlie, he didn't teach me anything, and he _is _about twice my size ... " She trailed off; Madam Hooch had ignored her utterly, and stalked down the line to fix Colin. Ginny sighed. "Good job, Demelza. Are you sure you've never done this before?"

"Pretty sure," beamed Demelza.

Ginny's pride suffered in silence for about an hour thereafter. She was _trying _to be pleased that her friend seemed to be doing just as well as her despite _not _having practiced for years in secret, but it still hurt a little. It was all very simple exercises - how to go up and down, how to speed up and slow down - but still ... So, much as she disliked her own jealous feelings, she still felt _much _better when the final activity of the lesson was learning to brake quickly, because that was the sort of thing you should know how to do before you went flying anywhere without supervision. Ginny was the only one who neither hit herself in the face with her broom handle nor fell off.

Still, she resolved to practice more, whenever she had a chance.

* * *

><p>The Halloween decorations seemed oddly muted this year, which perfectly suited the mood of the second-year Gryffindors, all of whom were a little gloomy. This was the anniversary of the day they had very nearly gotten Hermione Granger killed, and they were all quietly wondering to themselves whether they were really better people, or if they were just pretending to be. It wasn't as if they could ask her; she was gone, and wasn't coming back. None of them were much inclined to speak to anyone, nor pay much attention to their surroundings.<p>

Ron Weasley was frowning in the general direction of the Slytherin table, wondering if Hermione would have been better or worse off if he had taken the Sorting Hat up on its offer. He wouldn't have been there in Charms class, they had Charms with the Ravenclaws. And _that _day _he_'d been the one to say thoughtless, hateful things, the things that made her run off to the washroom and straight into the waiting club of an angry mountain troll ...

Percy Weasley, who firmly believed that he could have saved her well enough for her parents not to have freaked out if only he'd practiced _useful _spells instead of just the ones that would be on his exams, was sitting quietly as well, his gaze abstracted. He was wondering what he would do if some other young student were in danger, if his duties as a prefect were called upon again. The rules said you fetched a teacher, his common sense said there often wasn't time; for all that he'd spent a year wondering what he could have done better, he knew that if he had kept running down to the dungeons for McGonagall, Hermione Granger would be dead. _No one can force you to be a hero, Mr. Weasley. _(But what if there were no one else to do it? What if it was your job? What then?)

Fred and George Weasley were plotting a prank on the Slytherin table, in the conspicuous absence of the Bloody Baron (and indeed the entire ghost population). When they did look up from their murmuring to Lee Jordan, they looked at their brothers, puzzled.

Consequently, when Colin Creevey looked curiously at Demelza Robbins, sitting next to him, and said, "Have you seen Ginny?", and she shook her head and said that her roommate had not been feeling well today, none of the Weasleys were paying any attention to them at all.

* * *

><p>Draco Malfoy got there first, and he was grinning widely, for all that the hem of his robes was getting wet in the flood, as he read the sign aloud. Looking happier than he'd ever been, he yelled to the other Houses, "You'll be next, Mudbloods!"<p>

For there hung Mrs. Norris, stiff as a board, and the still-wet blood shining on the stone wall, reflecting off the puddles of water on the floor.

**THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED**

**ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE. **


	41. Dead Roosters & Shattered Broomsticks

_Dear Tom, _

_I can't remember Halloween. _

**_Wasn't it Halloween just recently? _**

_Yes, it was two days ago, and Demelza says I slept through the feast - apparently I told her I wasn't feeling well - but I don't remember anything, not even going to bed. Did I write anything then? _

**_On that day? Yes, I think you told me you were very tired and I told you you ought to go to bed early. You are overworking yourself, dear Ginevra. _**

_But why can't I remember it? I had red paint all down my front when I got up, and I usually have a pretty good memory. _

**_Red paint? Sounds like a classic example of accidental exhaustion magic. _**

_What? _

**_Magic doing strange things when you are unusually tired. Didn't you tell me your brothers had a story like that from last year? _**

_Oh. Yeah, they did. Only, Percy could remember the whole thing, he wrote up a list and everything, Percy likes making lists. How come he could remember and I can't? _

**_He is older than you. Is this the one you said fought the Dark Lord? _**

_Oh, yeah, I guess so. He doesn't like to talk about it. _

* * *

><p>"Morning, Hagrid!" said Neville cheerfully, as Ron failed spectacularly at the attempt not to get knocked to the ground by an excited Fang. While his redheaded friend was laughing and being slobbered on, he added, "Are you going to go see the game today? We're playing Slytherin, you know."<p>

Hagrid helpfully picked up Fang by the collar, freeing Ron to join them at the table. "Nah, I don' think I'll have time," Hagrid said apologetically, reaching for the teapot and discovering to his mild dismay that he still had a handful of enormous boarhound. He set Fang down again, causing Neville to acquire a lapful of Fang's head, and located a stack of enormous coffee-mug-sized teacups to start pouring. This was a usual ritual, Saturday morning tea, which had previously been a bit sporadic, though Hagrid was always delighted to see them. Ron and Neville were now doing it with more consistency now that it gave them an excuse to not be anywhere near Lavender and Parvati and their glossy copies of _Witch Weekly _with Lockhart on the front. The groundskeeper explained, "Gotta fix the fence, sommat's been killin' my roosters."

Ron and Neville exchanged puzzled glances. "Your roosters? Who'd do that?" asked Ron. "I mean, it's not like you're even close enough to the castle that anyone could hear them in the morning." As there were roosters at the Burrow, he somewhat understood the potential desire to murder them for being loud early in the morning, but he couldn't think of any _other _reason anyone would want to kill the otherwise completely harmless animals.

"Wait, why _do _you have roosters, then?" asked Neville, confused.

Hagrid raised an eyebrow at Neville. "Yeh need two kinds 'a chickens to make eggs, yeh know."

While Neville was turning an interesting shade of bright red, Ron said, "No, seriously, who does that? Just randomly murdering chickens? That's such a weird thing to do even if you wanted to be evil on purpose."

There was a pause, during which Hagrid frowned puzzledly, and then eventually said, "I don' think it's a _person_, Ron."

The redhead blinked. " ... oh," he said. "I just assumed ... that was stupid. Is there stuff in the Forest that could kill chickens?"

Hagrid frowned thoughtfully. "Well, that's the problem," he said. "The centaurs could, o'course, but I asked Magorian an' he said it wasn' them, an' of course Aragog wouldn' do that neither - "

"Aragog?" asked Ron curiously. He'd met Magorian, briefly, and recalled there having been a Ronan and a Bane, but that name he did not recognize. "Is that one of the centaurs?"

"No, he's an acromantula. Big spiders, right clever, there's a whole colony in the - what?" Ron's eyes had gone unnaturally wide, and his face very pale, at the information that there were giant spiders in the Forbidden Forest, but Neville had just burst out laughing. Hagrid was now staring at him in confusion. People did tend to be alarmed by the idea that their were acromantulas in the forest, that was why he always appended an assurance that they were perfectly civilized right after mentioning it to anyone, but _laughter _was a new one. "Er ... "

"_Giant spiders!_" Neville gasped through giggles, "Of _course _there are giant spiders!"

(Neville, you see, had just figured out what had traumatized the Weasley twins.)

" ... righ'," said Hagrid, looking slightly unsettled, "anyway, Aragog wouldn' do that, he an' his family keep ter themselves. Unicorns don' eat meat. The Hogwarts thestrals don' hunt outside the Forest, an' anyway they'd _eat _the roosters. There's a bunch 'a things what _could _kill 'em, but nothin' I can think that _would_."

"I guess it could be whatever killed Mrs. Norris," said Ron, still looking a little queasy.

"Petrified," corrected Neville. "Remember, Dumbledore said she wasn't actually dead."

"Oh," said Ron, sounding not at all pleased to be reminded, "right."

Eventually they'd drunk all the tea and still not thought of anything, except to suggest that Hagrid should probably just ask Dumbledore because Dumbledore knew everything, and it was time to go watch the Quidditch game.

* * *

><p>"<em>Draco Malfoy?<em>" said Fred. "What'd he do, pay off Flint?" asked George.

"He could just be a good flier," pointed out Katie reasonably, "couldn't he?"

"This is the kid that _Ron _wrestled off his broom," pointed out Fred. "On the first day of flying lessons!" added George.

"Ron could also be competent," said Percy, "I mean, he is a Weasley, and even _I _can fly."

"No, the twins are right," said Oliver, striding into the locker room looking grim. "He did pay off Flint. The whole Slytherin team's got Nimbus 2001's."

There was a shocked silence. The entire team exchanged unhappy, worried glances. There was no question that they were _better _than Slytherin; they'd only lost last year by seventy, and Percy had been both inexperienced and completely unenthused. The rest of the Slytherin team was the same still, and they had had every confidence that they'd do fine. But not with that kind of equipment gap; the twins could probably manage, since their Cleansweep Fives could certainly keep pace with Bludgers and that was all they needed, but Alicia's Comet 220 was the fastest the Quaffle part of the team had, and it would be practically crawling next to the new Nimbus.

"Right," said Percy briskly, "we'll just have to take a leaf out of Ron's book, then, won't we?"

"Um," said Alicia, "what?"

Angelina grinned. "He means, if we can't outrun them, we knock them out of the sky."

* * *

><p>Because they were so entirely outmatched in speed, it took some maneuvering for them to enact their plan, but the Gryffindors were not strangers to strategy. Not for nothing at all did Oliver spend hours drawing complicated wiggly diagrams, even if the team tended to sleep through most of them. They didn't usually <em>need <em>most of his complicated diagrams, because it was usually simple enough. But this one ... this one would be complicated.

So the first part of the game was spent being repeatedly outraced. Oliver only blocked two of the seven shots on goal, in exchange for two goals by Angelina and one by Alicia. The Slytherin stands were going wild; fifty to twenty was better than Slytherin had done in a long time against Gryffindor. The last few years they'd simply won by virtue of Terrence Higgs being better than whoever Oliver had dragged onto the field to try to be Charlie Weasley that year; the rest of their team tended to be outmatched. But now they were _winning_, and Percy wasn't _that _good, so everyone was thinking Malfoy was probably not going to have any trouble getting to the Snitch first, not with a Nimbus 2001 to Percy's old Nimbus 1000. Really their only chance was for Percy to get lucky, because if they kept playing, they were just going to dig themselves deeper into the whole that the first forty-five minutes had created. _  
><em>

Seamus, who had just explained all of this to Dean, looked at Ron curiously. He ought to know all of this, with three of his brothers on the field, but Ron looked surprisingly ... not worried. "Do you know something we don't?" asked Seamus in confusion. Ron had started to grin.

"Yep," said Ron. He'd been watching the game with a strange, abstracted frown on his face for some time, tracking the players' movements around the field and murmuring to himself silently. "They're about to do something cool." Ron pointed at Angelina, who was inscribing a vertical loop just to the Gryffindor side of the middle of the field. "She's been chasing Flint at weird angles all game, so has Alicia, and Katie's been deliberately distracting the Slytherins while they're doing it, which means they don't want them to notice. If I had a Galleon, I'd bet you one that they've been trying to sort out where on the field Angelina can hit Flint from when he's moving faster than she is. And now she's stopped, I think she's figured it out. And the twins have been missing Montague by steadily _less and less,_ I'm pretty sure they're adjusting fast. Look," he pointed at Alicia, "she just signalled something to Fred, I dunno what any of those hand-signs mean but I'll _bet _it means _we're ready_."

Whatever the signal had been, the twins repeated it, drawing acknowledging nods from Oliver and Percy. Then they proceeded to pretend as if nothing in particular had happened; the team all went on with what they were doing, which mostly was trying not to lose too badly. Katie got hold of the Quaffle long enough to score on Bletchley, and Oliver managed to block five of the eight shots made on him, bringing the score to eighty-thirty. Alicia had just had the Quaffle wrenched from her hand by a green bolt that was Warrington when Percy's head turned very suddenly, and he put two fingers to his mouth and emitted a piercing whistle. Alicia was the closest to being able to match the other team, but as she wheeled they were already pulling away from her, headed towards Oliver at speeds she could not match. Warrington tossed the Quaffle to Flint, just in time to be smacked in the gut by a Bludger. Bole promptly sent the iron ball shooting towards Katie, who ducked it and watched with a grin as George sent it off after the other Bludger, which Fred had just forced Malfoy to duck under. Flint, holding the Quaffle, made a rude gesture in the general direction of the twins, and kept on his course, arrowing straight for the goal posts. Montague spiralled off to block Katie as she dove in sideways, yelling something no one in the stands could hear.

Percy was shooting across the field at a speed which suggested he was aiming for something in particular. Montague spat something at Katie that was almost definitely a racial slur (Katie's parents were Muggleborn), and he was laughing along with Flint as the Slytherin Captain dodged a Bludger again and leaned back to launch a Quaffle at the goalposts, whereupon he noticed Percy mid-dive and Malfoy still recovering from dodging two Bludgers in quick succession, and opened his mouth to yell, "MA - "

- and that was when Angelina Johnson shot past him diving straight for the ground, and grabbed the handle of his broomstick on the way down.

You see, flying to collide is a foul. Grabbing someone's broomstick tail to slow them down is also a foul.

Grabbing the broomstick _handle_? Often effective when fighting laterally for a Quaffle, and technically legal.

Flint's attempt at a warning to his Seeker turned into a shriek as a handspan-wide segment of his broomstick was separated from the rest, and he (and the remaining parts of his broomstick) went into an uncontrolled downward spin. Angelina, braking hard, still hit the ground at a respectable speed, sending up a plume of dust and dirt and sand that would have done a landmine proud. And Percy Weasley, who had had almost a minute's lead on poor confused Draco Malfoy, snatched the golden Snitch out of the air. As the Gryffindor stands exploded, Ron, whose friends had been looking more and more dubious as the game wore on, said smugly, "Called it."

As the team landed around Angelina, they noticed with some concern that she was bleeding rather profusely. She'd broken her leg on impact with the ground, and many of the pieces of Flint's broken broomstick were embedded rather firmly in her right hand. She was, however, grinning hugely, in the general direction of the scoreboard, which was blinking GRYFFINDOR: 180, SLYTHERIN: 80. "That," she said, "was _totally_ worth it."


	42. Horrible Ideas, pt 2

The first professor on the scene, of course, was Gilderoy Lockhart.

If you were someone who had any accurate estimation of his competence - that is, _not _Angelina - you would probably have predicted what happened next. The twins certainly did; they both tried to object to his presence, but not quickly enough. Angelina would, much later, evince the opinion that instead of being flattered and smiling as 'Professor' Lockhart attempted to repair her broken leg, she ought to have punched him in the face with her handful of wood splinters. This, however, she did not do. So, naturally, she had to be carried up to the hospital wing with all the bones in her leg gone, to be lectured by Madam Pomfrey and prescribed a large bottle of Skele-Gro and at least a full night's rest.

Once they had all been kicked out, Fred and George Weasley felt it was their solemn duty to sneak into the hospital wing _expressly _to properly convey the phrase _we told you so. _Specifically, by creating some mayhem in the Hospital Wing. A dose of Madam Pomfrey being unusually angry, they figured, would be a good way to point out to Angelina that she shouldn't get herself stuck there overnight if it could possibly be avoided. A sensible person might have pointed out that they themselves had spent a day in the hospital wing the previous spring, and their brothers had been there longer. But the twins would have replied to this, in classically Gryffindor style, with the argument that that particular event had not exactly been _avoidable _in the way that getting injured by letting Lockhart try to Heal you was. There was a fine line, they would argue, between bravery and stupidity! (They hadn't yet realized that they didn't actually know where that line _was_.)

This argument having failed to move them, a sensible person might then have pointed out that whatever had Petrified Mrs. Norris might still be in the castle somewhere. They might have pointed out that sneaking out alone at night was dangerous, horribly dangerous, and really, Fred, George, what would your mother say? _  
><em>

But the only sensible person in Gryffindor was gone, and Fred and George had not yet acquired the habit of checking all actions against the rule _What would Hermione Granger do?_, not like their little brother and his friends. And so they carried on with their ridiculous plan, and only much later would they learn their lesson.

* * *

><p>The Weasley twins crept down the steps from Gryffindor Tower. George was holding the Marauders' Map, focused mostly on their own location and on Angelina, whose only company in the Hospital Wing was a lightly dozing mediwitch. Flint had hit the ground quite hard thanks to his broken broomstick, but he'd had the sense to threaten Lockhart with grievous injury, and when he was delivered to the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey had repaired his various injuries in approximately thirty seconds and sent him off with a stern look.<p>

The problem with the Marauders' Map, which the twins had not yet noticed, was that it focused on places you wanted to look at, without much breadth. If you were focused on things _near _you, it wouldn't show you anything much farther away. So, they didn't notice that a few hallways behind - just enough to be outside their vision, because he, of course, knew _exactly _where the line was drawn - they were being followed by Scabbers the rat. Even now that he was no longer Wormtail, he still felt the burning curiosity that had driven him to become what he was; and so he wanted to know where they were going, and why.

The twins had no idea. They were not particularly worried, since their usual concern was Mrs. Norris and she, conveniently, was not currently capable of stalking anyone. Still, it was good practice to use the Map at all times when you were sneaking around, and so they were both keeping an eye on it, walking close enough together that they could both see it.

So they did notice, when something changed, when something showed up too quickly for it not to be concerning. When they were quite close to the hospital wing, two dots materialized on the map a hallway over from them, too close to have been the usual wandering-into-the-observable-zone effect that you got when you were focused on an area with fuzzy edges instead of walls. They'd just showed up, very suddenly. One was labeled _Esther_, which - experience suggested - meant it was an animal (since people had two names - owls, for example, showed up with only one). The other was labeled _Tom Riddle_.

The twins exchanged a puzzled and rather alarmed glance. Tom Riddle was the name they had associated with Quirrell last year, when they concluded that their Defense Professor was evil, possibly dead, and eating unicorns. That was the name they'd seen appear, when Quirrell went off into the forest. And then later, they'd learned that Quirrell had actually been possessed by Voldemort, who was responsible for the unicorns. They hadn't asked the headmaster about it, because that would require admitting that they had the Map, which they suspected would be confiscated if they did. Still, even without confirmation, they were rather sure that Tom Riddle was, in fact, Voldemort's name.

So, to say that seeing the name on the Map again was a bad thing would be an _enormous _understatement.

To hear it in the company of an ominous hissing noise? Even worse.

They were still sneaking quietly along the hallway, debating whether they ought to abandon their attempts to be quiet and simply run, when Ginny stepped around the corner. They stopped dead, eyes widening in perfect, shocked sync. She was very pale, and her eyes were bright red, and she had a curiously blank expression on her face. Her arms were hanging oddly limply at her sides, and she was walking with a strange, gliding step. All this would have been alarming on its own; but the most alarming things was that despite it being, quite obviously, their little sister, the Map continued to indicate the name _Tom Riddle. _So, definitely Ginny, because Polyjuice wouldn't turn someone's eyes that colour, but definitely not Ginny, because the Map doesn't lie. And, well, that look on her face, it wasn't ... right.

Behind her came the dark slithering shadow of something enormous, and terribly frightening.

"Ginny," said Fred, quietly, carefully. "Can you hear me?"

There was a distinct pause. The red eyes flickered, brown for a split second, the colour they were supposed to be. A hissing sound came from the dark shadows around the corner, and Ginny turned her head and snapped something at it, spitting a sharp hissing noise that was grating and high-pitched and horribly unnatural. Then she made a slightly more natural whining noise, as if she were in pain. Another hiss, and then there came a strained, weak voice, as if it were taking all of her willpower to speak. She gasped, "_Basilisk - !_", and that was all. Then she clutched at her head, and dropped to her knees, and more angry hissing escaped her.

But that was all they needed to know.

Fred and George had never had a competent Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. But they _were _related to Charlie Weasley, who had earned an Outstanding on his Care of Magical Creatures NEWT in his fifth year and not bothered to come back. They knew what _basilisk _meant, what it was. They knew that they did not have time to run. The prescribed response to basilisks was a) Apparate away, and if you couldn't do that, the next best thing was to b) get yourself Petrified, if you couldn't kill it on the instant, because otherwise it would chase you down and eat you even if you shut your eyes ...

They pointed their wands at the nearest wall sconce, choosing the same one without bothering to communicate in any normal way, and Transfigured it, metal and wood and flame all together. A moment later, as the great looming presence came hissing towards them, they were staring into the glass of a shiny new silver mirror.

And then they were stone, wands extended, identical grim, frightened expressions on their faces, as the Marauders' Map fluttered to the floor.

* * *

><p>Once Ginny-who-was-not-Ginny was gone again, and Esther the basilisk had slithered back into her resting place, and Tom Riddle had shrieked at his uncooperative host until she cowered, there was no one to watch the dark corridor leading up to the hospital wing. The Transfiguration on the torch would last for hours, and until then, there was no light at all.<p>

Had there been light, and someone to see, they might have observed a fascinating event. They might have observed a fat little grey rat scurry up to the scene and examine it curiously. They might have observed Peter Pettigrew blur very briefly into existence, just long enough to whisper _Mischief Managed, _just long enough to pick up an innocuous blank piece of parchment from the floor. They might have observed him fold it up, and pocket it. They might have then observed him go away again, using a power he oughtn't to have, turning into a rat that scuttled back into the darkness unseen. They might have known he had his prize safely tucked away where no one would find it. They might have known that a dead man lived, and the man who killed him ought to be saved.

But no one saw.

* * *

><p><em>Dear Tom, <em>

_I hate you. I should never have believed you when you said it wasn't me killing Hagrid's chickens. _

**_And here I was hoping you wouldn't notice until at least February. I suppose I have learned a lesson about trying to make people kill their relatives quite so early in a possession. _**

_I'm going to tell Dumbledore._

**_Ah, no. You will do no such thing. _**

_You think I won't? Sure he'll probably expel me but that's better than somebody_ _dying!_

**_Ha. It may be earlier than I was hoping, but it is too late, dear Ginevra._**

_What!_

**_You couldn't tell anyone if you tried. _**

_;;- ! - ( ~~_

_**Eloquent.**  
><em>

_I hate you I hate you I hate you_

_I hate you forever_

**_Until I kill you. Which will be later, rather than sooner, if you do what I ask. _**

_no! _

**_Well, I suppose I will just have to make you, then. _**

_no no no no no no _

**_Shut up. _**

_- - - ! _


	43. Fighting Is Not A Sport

Parvati and Lavender joined the Gryffindor breakfast table, just slightly behind the boys as usual. They both - Lavender moreso - managed to look surprisingly put-together, despite having had their morning routine interrupted by Professor McGonagall's announcement about the attack of the night before. "So," began Parvati seriously, "we're doing the duelling club thing - " Seamus and Dean both made frantic quelling gestures as she spoke, but it was too late. Parvati finished her sentence in a confused voice: " - right?" Ron, the subject of her question, didn't even look up from the book he was reading (_Staple Spells for Duellists_). He was frowning at it with a rather alarming intensity, and did not appear to be paying any attention to what he was eating.

"Of course we are," said the de facto leader of the second-year Gryffindors, chewing on a sausage and absently practicing a complicated-looking gesture with his fork. Everyone in earshot winced, except for his brother Percy, who was sitting a few seats away, next to Oliver. The Quidditch captain, Parvati noticed with some concern, looked like he was stuck halfway between running away as fast as possible and just sort of surrendering to some sort of terrible unknown doom; after a moment's thought, he evidently chose the latter, and his head dropped to the table with a sigh. Lavender gave him a puzzled look, and Alicia (looking long-suffering) patted him on the shoulder and silently offered him a slice of toast.

Meanwhile, the reason for the mass cringing was almost immediately obvious. "Oh, of course," said Percy in an acidic tone. He hadn't looked up from his book, either (the _Counter-Curse Handbook, _thirty-ninth edition), but it was obvious he was speaking to Ron. The elder Weasley's voice was practically dripping angry derision, which - coming from someone who took his responsibilities as a prefect so seriously - was distinctive and disconcerting. "Because _duelling _will _absolutely _help. I'm sure Fred and George would have done _much _better against the Heir of Slytherin if they'd known how to _bow and count to ten!"_

Ron visibly gritted his teeth, as Lavender and Parvati sat down across from him, exchanging uncomfortable glances. "In case you hadn't noticed, Percy, the Heir of Slytherin is probably a _student._"

"And your point is what?" Percy's voice ought to have cut through steel. It was even worse than that time he'd threatened to hang them from the rafters by their shoelaces, but Ron did not seem to be wavering at all under the force. "When's the last time a fight in the corridors didn't start with someone getting jinxed from behind? Kids are just as dishonorable as adults, probably _worse_ - "

"They had their wands out!" snapped Ron. "They _knew _they were being attacked, they just didn't know any proper duelling spells, which is why - "

"Or," said Percy, "the Heir of Slytherin is a seventh-year, judging by his ability to cast _Petrifaction Curses_, which if you were doing _sensible _research you would know are above NEWT-level, and he knows how to _fight_, not duel, which is _not the same thing at all!_"

"You really, really should not have asked that," Dean said to Parvati in a tired voice, as the two Weasleys started to shout at each other (again).

* * *

><p>Ginny did not participate in the argument.<p>

Her friends might have wondered why she was so quiet, if they hadn't had a ready-made excuse in the form of Fred and George.

And so she screamed, inside her head, and no one noticed.

* * *

><p>At 8 PM sharp, a great many Hogwarts students convened in the Great Hall for Lockhart's Duelling Club. The great wooden House tables had been pushed to the sides, and a raised platform placed in the center of the Hall. On it stood Lockhart, of course, dressed in dramatic purple. Parvati's eyebrows rose as she saw him, and Seamus gave her a funny look. "Don't tell me you're going to go back to insisting he's not an idiot?" he asked worriedly. Those parts of Gryffindor that interacted often with members of the Quidditch team - Lavender and Parvati among them - had all largely gotten over the hero-worship problem when Angelina had had most of her arm temporarily removed.<p>

"No, no," said Parvati absently, still gazing curiously at their Defense professor. "It's just that I'm _pretty _sure he's never duelled in competition," which she hoped she might know, as her father was an avid fan of that sort of thing, "and he somehow looks exactly like one of those sort of peacocky show duellists." He really did, from artfully arranged cape to shiny and somewhat impractical shoes. (Not that she was one to talk about the shoes, of course; she was wearing highly impractical sandals which she'd probably need to take off if duelling turned out to require her to move more than a few steps at a time. After all, even if you were doing something physical, you couldn't possibly do anything so gauche as to wear _trainers_. Honestly, Lavender had no sense at all.)

Neville laughed, somewhat nervously. Seamus said, "Probably thinks it'll make everyone think he's for real." Ron snorted softly in derision. It was the first noise the redhead had made since breakfast, and Parvati was not the only one who jumped slightly at being reminded of his presence. He must have gotten up from the corner he'd been reading in and followed them, but she hadn't actually noticed. Neville and Dean startled, too, and Seamus made a high-pitched sort of yelping noise. It told you something about how much noise Ron usually made, thought Parvati somewhat wryly, that his angry silence was throwing them all off so badly.

Lavender rolled her eyes at Seamus. She hadn't apparently noticed Ron, or possibly hadn't lost track of him at all. "As if we haven't got _brains,_" she said irritably. Quite as if it hadn't been only days since the last time she squealed over Lockhart's hair, she announced, "After all, it's not what he _looks _like that matters, it's what he _does_." Seamus and Neville both nodded firmly in encouraging agreement. They'd stopped bothering to point out apparent hypocrisy, and instead taken to showing support whenever she changed her mind in a positive direction. After all, Lavender, for all her flightiness, never said anything she didn't actually - at the time - believe.

"Image is important," disagreed Parvati, "but yes, really, there's a point where - "

"Is that _Snape_?" said Dean, derailing the conversation as everyone turned to look in surprise.

Indeed, Professor Snape - swathed in forbidding black as usual and looking somewhat annoyed - had stalked onto the stage opposite Lockhart. "Huh," said Parvati, "I would've guessed Flitwick."

"Why?" asked Lavender curiously.

"Well, he used to be a champion duellist," explained Parvati, "my dad's a _huge _fan, that's why he was so excited when Padma got Sorted Ravenclaw." Lavender made an _ohhhh _sound of comprehension, as they reached the platform and waited for the meeting to begin. Thankfully, the older Gryffindors had largely let the younger ones stand in the front, since they could see right over them. Someone muttered somewhat disgruntledly in the direction of Ron, who was quite tall even at twelve, but Ron ignored the sound completely.

When Snape threw Lockhart across the room with a Disarming Jinx, all the Slytherins and most of the Gryffindors broke into cheers, although most of the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs didn't _quite _hate Lockhart enough to have ranked him below Snape the way the Gryffindors had. Snape looked a little startled; Seamus observed, snickering, that he had probably never in his life been applauded by anyone from the House of Gryffindor. After a moment, however, he regained his composure, while Lockhart was getting to his feet spluttering vaguely, and nodded with a smug smirk as the dramatically useless Defense Against the Dark Arts professor suggested they instead have the students pair up.

Lockhart cheerfully paired up the Gryffindor group with various people nearby with whom they generally got along - Neville and Justin, Seamus and Ernie, Dean and Anthony, Lavender and Michael, Parvati and Padma (although Parvati suspected this was because he had, again, forgotten which of them was which; you'd think the convenient House color-coding would be a clue, but noooo) - but Snape got to Ron first, and (grinning) paired him up with Draco Malfoy. Parvati sighed. "What?" said Padma curiously.

"There's no _way _at least one of them's not going to the hospital wing," she explained, nodding at Ron and Draco, who were currently exchanging venomous looks. She glanced back at Lockhart, who continued to swan around in an even more dramatic fashion than usual, heading back for the stage now that everyone had been paired up for fighting, looking exactly like he thought he was a champion duellist. Actually, it looked a bit like he was deliberately affecting the same sort of self-assured strut that had been perfected by the Israeli wizard who'd won the most recent International Duelling Championships. "Is it just me, by the way, or does Lockhart _totally_ look like he's pretending to be Avram Meyer?"

"Oh, definitely, I was thinking that too," said Padma. "Flip a coin to shoot first?" She produced a knut, and tossed it.

"Heads," said Parvati, and pouted when it came down tails.

Up on the stage, Lockhart was exhorting everyone to practice the Disarming Jinx that Snape had demonstrated - "_Only_ to Disarm!" he said loudly - and began to count. "One - two - THREE!"

On three, Padma, as instructed, shouted, "_Expelliarmus!_", which markedly failed to have any effect. "Right," she said, making a face, "your turn."

Parvati tried in turn, and although she didn't actually succeed in disarming her twin, she did manage to turn her shirt an interesting shade of blue. "Huh," she said, "I didn't mean to do that."

"I think you mispronounced it?" said Padma dubiously. "This is not very well-organized, I think I am going to talk to Professor Flitwick about it - "

Lockhart was, by this point, yelling ineffectually for everyone to stop; to Parvati's complete lack of surprise, the room had descended into chaos almost instantly. Less than a minute after the fighting had started, Snape's voice cut through the din: "_Finite incantatem!_" he roared, and the chaos departed, leaving quite a bit of debris in its wake. Justin and Neville were on the ground for some reason, Lavender and Michael seemed to have accidentally generated rabbits somehow, Dean and Anthony were all the way across the great Hall near the older Hufflepuffs, and Ernie was apologizing very seriously to a giggling and neon-green Seamus. Ron and Draco ... were still hexing each other. Rather violently, actually; Draco had summoned a snake from somewhere that was doing its best to strangle Ron, and Ron had hit Draco with something nasty that had paralyzed his left arm and was turning him a rather worrying shade of grey.

"Well, at least they're both still conscious," said Parvati dryly, pacing over as Neville pulled himself off the ground. Snape was stalking in their direction, and Neville and Parvati exchanged awkward glances; they weren't totally sure they could stop _Ron, _nevermind untangle him from Malfoy. Neville turned and looked at Theodore Nott, who was standing a few feet away carefully smoothing down his shirt collar and looking derisively at his housemate.

"Help us stop them before we both lose a billion House points, would you?" Neville said.

Theo blinked a couple of times, and then said, "Right," and leaned in to catch Draco by the shoulders as Neville seized the summoned snake and Parvati wrapped an arm around Ron's elbow and tried to figure out how to trip him without scuffing her shoes.

Some yelling and flailing later, the two combatants had been sufficiently separated and were glaring at each other. Neville and Theo, having achieved this, high-fived, and then awkwardly edged away from each other when everyone in the vicinity gave them odd looks. Snape turned up a moment later to Vanish the snake and frown at everyone. "Ten points from Gryffindor for starting a fight, Weasley," he snapped at Ron, who visibly bit his tongue, looking furious. Draco grinned. "Nott, ten points to Slytherin for rescuing your classmate." There was a pause, and then he - sounding begrudging - added, "and twenty to Gryffindor for the two of you helping him." He glared darkly at them as he said it, as if he were personally offended by the fact that they'd managed to solve a problem using inter-House cooperation. While everyone was still absorbing this shock - they were an even ten points up on both sides - he stalked off.

"Huh," said Neville.

"Huh," echoed Theo.

Lavender handed them each a rabbit.


	44. Letters

September 19, 1992

Dear Hermione,

We've been studying more, because Neville said that we should make sure our class average is at least as high as it would have been if you were still here and I think he's right. McGonagall looked at us funny when we told her that, but she says she thinks we managed it. Anyway we're trying to be more like you but because we were being awful we don't really know that much about you except that you were way better at classes than any of us, so, I thought I would ask.

Do you have any suggestions for how we can be better?

Ron Weasley

* * *

><p>September 30, 1992<p>

Mr. Weasley,

I strongly encourage you to be more like your brother Percy.

In specific: follow the rules; do your homework; listen to your professors; help younger students with their work.

Hermione Granger.

P.S. I never got to thank Percy for saving my life. Please tell him not to feel guilty for my withdrawal; I am now learning magic elsewhere, and in any case it was not his fault.

* * *

><p>October 10, 1992<p>

Dear Hermione,

Percy says to tell you he was just doing his job, and he hopes you are doing well at your new school. I'm pretty sure he was glad to hear it, though. (He broke a bunch of rules and fought You-Know-Who at the end of last term, but Dumbledore seemed to think it was a good call, so I guess he is probably still a good example.)

Where are you going?

Ron Weasley

* * *

><p>October 21, 1992<p>

Mr. Weasley,

That is none of your business.

Hermione Granger

* * *

><p>November 1, 1992<p>

Dear Hermione,

I'm sorry. Parvati says I was "tactless." I am still not very good at this. I hope you are having a good term, wherever you are.

What would you do if Mrs. Norris (Filch's cat) got Petrified? Last night they found her after the feast with a threatening message about the Heir of Slytherin painted on the wall.

Ron Weasley

* * *

><p>November 12, 1992<p>

Dear Mr. Weasley,

That is an interesting problem. Thank you for sharing it with me, although I am still rather glad I am not there to deal with it in person.

First, transcribe the message so that you have it for reference if and when the wall is cleaned, if that hasn't happened already. (If it has, get it down as soon as possible as exactly as you can remember.)

Next, research the following topics:

- Who or what is the Heir of Slytherin? Is it likely to be a student?

- Does anyone know if Filch or Mrs. Norris had done anything unusual immediately before the attack?

- Do you have Mandrakes at Hogwarts? According to one of my professors they can be used to make a potion that cures Petrifaction.

Note that Petrifaction, although easiest achieved deliberately with a Petrifaction Curse, is a relatively common result of casting lethal curses poorly. This may suggest that your culprit is young and inexperienced.

I will be glad to dispense further suggestions if you give me the answers to these questions.

Hermione Granger

* * *

><p>November 23, 1992<p>

[Enclosed: a sketch of the first-floor corridor, flooded, with Mrs. Norris hanging Petrified and the message on the wall]

Dear Hermione,

Thank you for your advice.

Dean drew a picture for you. Mrs. Norris isn't there anymore, they took her down the day of the attack, but the paint's still there for some reason, I think maybe Filch was afraid to touch it.

Seamus asked in History of Magic, and apparently the Heir of Slytherin is supposed to be the only person who's able to open the Chamber of Secrets, which in the legend contains a horrible monster that's meant to kill everyone in the school that Salazar Slytherin wouldn't have considered worthy of studying magic. Nobody can think of anything in particular Filch did to a specific person, he's just sort of _always _awful to _everyone_. But last weekend Fred and George got Petrified in the middle of the night, so it's probably somebody that cares about "blood traitors" (that's what the crazy purebloods call us).

We definitely have Mandrakes, we've been taking care of them in Herbology classes actually.

I think it's Draco Malfoy, is that stupid?

Ron Weasley

* * *

><p>December 4, 1992<p>

Dear Mr. Weasley,

Judging by last summer's highly public conflict between your father and Lucius Malfoy, I think you would not be at all remiss in making Draco Malfoy your prime suspect based on the evidence that your brothers were among the first targets. Also, he would fit the "young and inexperienced" bit as well. You do not have any hard evidence, but if there are Mandrakes at Hogwarts, you should only need to wait until your brothers are revived, and they will likely be able to testify as to who attacked them. (Tell them to volunteer for Veritaserum testing - they will be harder to dismiss as biased that way.)

In the meantime, I encourage you to focus on defending yourself and your classmates. If Draco Malfoy is Petrifying people, he's doing it by _trying to kill them_, and that is potentially extremely dangerous for everyone. As an introduction I strongly recommend the _Staple Spells for Duellists _series.

Hermione Granger

* * *

><p>December 15, 1992<p>

Dear Hermione,

I've finished reading that book. Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks for your help.

Ron Weasley


	45. Nott Suspicious At All

Hermione was still shocked at how tea with the Notts had gone.

It was three months later and she still wasn't really over it.

Immediately after threatening Theodore, she'd followed him into the house, trying not to look completely bowled over by the ostentatious opulence of the place. He hadn't bothered to shut the door - apparently that was what house-elves were for - and instead stalked into the dining room, wherein Hermione had observed for the first time her ostensible patriarch, Jared Nott. He was, for lack of a better word, _old._ He'd foregone the traditional Long White Wizardly Beard in favor of shaving his head completely and cutting his snow-white beard closely against the sharp lines of his face, but he could not escape the wrinkles in his skin or the creeping arthritis in his joints. Hermione had had to scramble not to say something incredibly stupid, like, for instance, _are you sure this is your father and not your grandfather,_ because of course he was Theodore's father. She'd even looked this up: the current head of the House of Nott had had several elder children who'd died in the war, and then his wife had died in childbirth because she'd really been much too old to have another child, even given the robust health of witches and wizards.

Instead she'd curtseyed somewhat awkwardly as Theodore said, quite stiffly, "Father, this is Hermione."

"I see," old Nott had rumbled in a voice like volcanic rock, frowning down at her from where he was looming over the tea table, and then instructed, "Sit." Hermione and Theodore both sat, and Hermione had only barely managed not to look startled as a teacup materialized in front of her. She had suspected almost immediately, and correctly, that she was about to be interrogated. "You are how old, child?"

"Twelve, sir," Hermione had replied.

He'd looked at her like she was a mildly interesting book. She still wasn't sure whether that was supposed to have been a good thing or not. "And you have just completed your _third _year at Durmstrang Institute?"

"I tested out of the first two years, sir," she'd explained, trying to figure out how to sound proud without sounding arrogant. Given the average level of arrogance displayed by almost all Durmstrang students, this was one of the things she'd actually been getting _worse _at, and she suspected she hadn't done a very good job, but it hadn't seemed to bother old Nott.

He'd nodded, and said again, "I see." Then, "Why have you not informed me of your existence? Karkaroff's letter was the first I heard of you."

Hermione had summarized her carefully constructed lie as clearly as possible. She explained that she was his cousin's granddaughter, that she had been given to Muggles for her safety near the end of the war along with a House Ring (which she was wearing). That those Muggles had (to everyone's surprise, she was sure) actually tried their best to be responsible parents when her actual parents had died, that she'd grown rather fond of them (she made an analogy about pet dogs that made Theodore emit a sort of choked giggling sound). That Headmaster Karkaroff had very kindly lied to the Muggles for her so that she could attend Durmstrang, that she had been so engrossed in her studies (she said something very enthusiastic about Blasting Curses that was almost a direct quote from her roommate Adriana) that she had, to her great dismay, completely neglected to write to her patriarch, which she had been unable to do prior to her enrollment in school owing to the fact that she did not own an owl.

When she stopped talking, after that first barrage of words, there had been a very uncomfortable silence. It had felt like hours, but in retrospect Hermione thought it had probably only been a short few fractions of a minute.

Old Nott had sipped his tea and said, "You may keep your pet Muggles if you tell me how you stole my Ring, little Mudblood."

There was a heavy silence, like the abrupt descending of a thousand tons of dead water.

Indeed, Hermione had felt, in that moment and many of the moments following, like she was drowning. She'd felt like a complete fool, a failure. She'd realized, very suddenly and without any adjustment time, that she was a reckless child who'd jumped in much too far over her head, and she had been positive she was about to die for her stupid audacity. But she had managed to stammer (_my parents, oh god, Mum and Dad, please don't hurt them_), "I, I - Levitation charms, s-sir."

To her great surprise, he had not immediately murdered her. Instead, he'd grinned widely. It somehow made him look simultaneously much friendlier and much more frightening. "Clever," he'd said. "A bit brute-force for my taste, but clever, for your age." Amusement did not suit him; it made him look like a very elderly axe murderer. Hermione vividly remembered the cold shiver that had run through her, and thought it must have been quite visible. He, however, had ignored her discomfort completely, turned to the other person at the table, and asked, "Did she threaten you, Theodore?"

Because _of course _he knew who she was. Hermione had later checked, and realized she'd neglected to consider the fact that _Jared Nott was on the Hogwarts Board of Governors._ Naturally, the fact that a Muggleborn witch named Hermione had been withdrawn from Hogwarts last fall had been on the quarterly report to the Board, and the old wizard had known immediately that he was being lied to. Theodore, obviously having reached the same conclusion and figuring he could now answer truthfully without being set on fire, had nodded. "Immolation Curse," he'd supplied, glancing at Hermione with a look that suggested he was trying not to sound as frightened by the idea as he was. "I don't _think _she was making that up, but you could probably check with the Durmstrang Head, she said she did it for exams."

"Ah," nodded the old wizard. "Yes, he mentioned that. Very impressive, child."

Hermione had said, her voice much too high-pitched, "Thank you?"

"If you hurt my son, I will kill you," he had said in a perfectly conversational tone. "Now, you will need to learn to curtsey properly, and we are definitely going to have to do something about the state of your hair, but you will be very useful, I think. Tell me about your professors."

And the rest of the tea, to Hermione's complete and continued shock, had somehow gone perfectly smoothly.

* * *

><p>She'd returned to Durmstrang for the fall semester equipped with new boots (apparently, wearing trainers was Not Allowed), a brooch in the design of the Notts' favorite stylized purple-and-black half-moon (clasping your cloak with an ordinary pin was also Not Allowed), somewhat singed hair (you could, it turned out, force hair to lie flat with sufficiently liberal application of specialized heat charms<em>,<em> and of course, her bushy mane was also Not Allowed), shrunken front teeth (Muggle dentistry was _definitely_ Not Allowed; she'd have to figure out some way to conceal that or her parents would be very upset) several books on proper pureblood manners that she was expected to have memorized by Christmas break, a list of threats she'd been required to memorize which enumerated what would be done to her biological parents if she failed to uphold the dignity of the family name she had been allowed to use, and a firmly renewed sense of terrified purpose.

Right now she was useful; there were many practical advantages to being able to claim a prodigiously talented young Durmstrang student as part of your House, after all. But she was holding no illusions that old Nott would not murder her out of hand the second she became more inconvenient than useful; there were too many ways for an ancient and wealthy house to make people vanish. Therefore she needed to continue being useful for as long as she was not capable of defeating the old wizard in a fight. It was a frighteningly high bar to hit, but what else could she do?

Viktor had asked her curiously, as they sat down for the start of term feast (less absurd than Hogwarts', but pleasant all the same), whether she was alright, because she looked rather out of sorts. She'd temporized awkwardly, "I had a ... sort of stressful time with my relatives," and thankfully this had been accepted sympathetically by all and the subject had drifted away. Instead she had listened with quiet interest and tried to absorb her friends' cheer. Viktor talked enthusiastically about his summer at the Bulgarian national training grounds; Jarek and Natasha argued about the odds of their respective favorite professional duellists doing well this season; Adriana made affectionate fun of Viktor for enjoying spending his time being yelled at by Boris Vulchanov; and no one tried to force her to do anything other than listen. They were all used to her tendency to be very quiet until she had something to talk at length about.

Although the return to classes and friends had calmed her down, it had taken her the entire fall term and an absurd amount of studying-as-catharsis before she'd really been able to approach the thought of her return to Britain with anything other than panic. She was being required to spend a week of her break at the Nott Estate (which, she had noticed, did not actually have an _address,_ because that would imply anyone didn't already know where it was. _Purebloods_, honestly) and had been avoiding thinking about it all term. As far as she could tell, this would consist of about half "being introduced around to other obnoxious British wizarding upper class children" and about half "being subtly or not-so-subtly threatened", plus or minus arguing with her hair and having extremely awkward half-interactions with Theodore. He was still somewhat terrified of her, but, to be fair, she _had _threatened to violently murder him and so she couldn't really blame him. At least she hadn't had to think of an excuse to give her parents, since they were in Italy for the holiday break and did not expect her home until the summer.

(It had also taken her almost the entire fall term - and a lot of somewhat amused advice from her roommates - before she'd been consistently able, with time, magic, magical hair product, _and _magical hair dye, to force her hair to at least vaguely resemble Theodore's. It was still curlier than it ought to be, but black, and could be controlled with careful braiding. But she was going to have to do it, at the very least during the time she was in Britain, or she'd be outed and probably murdered the second she got within a hundred yards of Draco Malfoy.)

She'd been owl-posted a timed Portkey, which was not the slightest bit strange at Durmstrang, and also a Slytherin scarf, which had gotten her a few odd looks. The letter accompanying the scarf (which she'd stared at and not put on) informed her that it had been her grandfather's. The subtext was that she was to avoid wearing anything red or gold, because the students who'd known her during her very brief Hogwarts education would be more likely to recognize her if she was wearing Gryffindor colours. It shouldn't have bothered her, turning her back on the Sorting that had brought her only grief. It was Gryffindor tactlessness and Gryffindor stupidity that had gotten her expelled from Hogwarts, of course, Gryffindor audacity that had landed her in the precarious position she now occupied.

And yet it was Gryffindor bravery that had saved her life.

Hermione Nott could not wear red; but Hermione Granger was not going to wear green.

She left wearing a black scarf, and with her head held high.


	46. Snowstorm

The day of the blizzard was very eventful.

It rattled against the windows, piled up against the walls, and made beautiful patterns against the ceiling of the Great Hall. Some of the more adventurous students (and a few that were less adventurous but happened to know how to get Impervius Charms to stick to clothing) even went outside, to build forts and have dramatic pitched battles. The six NEWT Astronomy students commandeered a large fraction of the Ravenclaw table to set up telescopes and make complicated weather charts and talk very excitedly about omens and centaur prophecies with Professor Sinistra. And of course, Herbology classes for the last day of term had been cancelled. Neville - and really only Neville - pouted all morning; he only cheered up when Professor Sprout - looking quite amused - invited him to tea and gave him the lecture notes for the day.

And that was only before lunchtime.

* * *

><p>"D'you know Loony Lovegood's been sleeping in the library?" said Jimmy Peakes as he caught up to Ginny and Demelza. Colin, as usual, was off somewhere taking pictures of things; Ginny had been mostly silent ever since Fred and George had been attacked, and Demelza didn't have the force of personality on her own to keep Colin from wandering off.<p>

Demelza stared at her classmate. Sleeping in the library? She could guess what for - Luna had the typically Ravenclaw tendency to obsessively research things, except that she kept researching things that were _crazy_ - but surely that was against the curfew rules? She began, shocked, "How on Earth is she getting away with th - " and was interrupted.

"Her name is not _Loony!_" snapped Ginny angrily. "She's - "

(_ - right_, was the rest of the sentence, but she was not allowed to finish it. After a moment her truncated sentence was disregarded, and the topic went away again, to winter break plans and Quidditch games, and Ginny, seething unseen, went back to suffering in silence.)

* * *

><p>Draco Malfoy, too dignified for snowball fights, wandered over to the library.<p>

As he walked by, Ron Weasley got up from his study table very suddenly, startling everyone around him, and accused Malfoy, quite loudly, of being the Heir of Slytherin. A great many heads turned to look; people did not ordinarily speak above a whisper in the library. Everyone was curious, too; ever since the previous day's duelling club, during which Draco had notably summoned a _snake _at Ron, there had been a lot of rumours that this was precisely the case. "And you're not even being subtle or anything, you stupid little prat," Ron continued, sounding stressed and very angry, "I mean, really, summoning snakes at me, you'd think you were _trying _to get caught. Wanted the recognition too badly, huh?"

"I am flattered that you think I am the most Slytherin person in the building," said Draco in response, grinning widely, "but you can't pin anything on me, Weasley."

There was a pause, as whispers spread through the bystanders. That hadn't exactly been a _denial_. Many of the Slytherins in the vicinity were rolling their eyes - this was a stock response that indicated Draco wanted to pretend he knew more about the situation than he actually did - but almost everyone else was taking this as almost confirmation, given all the apparent evidence available to them. After all, the Malfoys loved to brag about their blood status, and it wouldn't be weird at all if they could claim descent from Slytherin somewhere in the line. Or for that matter maybe the Blacks could, and Draco Malfoy's mother had been a Black. Plus, there had been that highly-public conflict between Lord Malfoy and the Weasley patriarch last summer, and it was the _Weasley twins _that had been attacked ...

"I _know _it's you," snarled Ron, "how long did it take your dad to teach you that spell, huh? Had to practice first on Mrs. Norris, because you're too incompetent to - "

Draco drew his wand.

Ron laughed, delighted. "I _dare_ you," he said. "Try to kill me right here in the middle of the library with dozens of people watching, get sent to Azkaban, it'll be _worth it _if you win, right?" He made a 'bring it on' gesture, opening his arms wide. "Come on, don't be a coward."

"Coward is just what _Gryffindors_ say to excuse their total lack of common sense," snapped Draco. "_Tarantallegra!_"

Ron, snickering, ducked and drew his wand. He completely ignored the table behind him, which had had to be counterspelled by its alarmed Hufflepuff occupants when it attempted to start dancing. So that hadn't been a murder attempt, Ron was thinking, but he could do a duel again, too, if Malfoy wanted, that was fine, he would never turn down an excuse for a fight. Besides, he'd been practicing. He began, "_Exp -_ "

"NO DUELLING IN THE LIBRARY!" interrupted the strident voice of Madam Pince, who had just arrived on the scene and looked deeply offended by all this noise. Several people giggled and then quickly stifled the sound as the librarian turned her glare on them, and Ron and Draco rather hurriedly both pocketed their wands. They tried to look innocent, and were dramatically unsuccessful.

"Um - sorry - " began Ron awkwardly.

Draco, at the same time, tried, "We just - "

"OUT! BOTH OF YOU!"

They went.

The other Gryffindors exchanged glances and sighs. Neville tapped his palm for rock/parchment/wand; he and Lavender threw rock, Parvati and Dean picked wands, and Seamus, the odd one out with parchment, made a face and got up to chase Ron. _Someone _would have to drag him in a direction that was different from the direction that Malfoy was going, and in any case they'd agreed on a general policy of not going around alone ever since the twins had been Petrified. The third-year Hufflepuffs with the recently-jinxed table gave the group odd looks as the remaining four of them resumed their studying with barely a hitch, having exchanged zero words.

Seamus returned with Ron about ten minutes later; they both looked somewhat annoyed.

"Draco Malfoy," said Seamus, shaking his head, "is, without question, the most annoying person I have _ever met_." Ron clearly had the same opinion, but he was expressing it by flopping into a chair and glaring at a bookshelf, which glared back rather stubbornly.

"Did you jinx him?" asked Lavender.

"No," grumbled Seamus, who had really wanted to. "We exerted _self-control,_" he said the word like he was disgusted by it, "and came back here so we wouldn't murder him and get arrested for vigilante-ing."

Dean, who had been trying to convince his classmates to stop resorting to violence at the drop of a hat, beamed and said cheerfully, "You win a cookie!", and handed him a sketch of a cartoon mouse with a clover pendant eating a cookie. Lavender, who had earned one of these drawings yesterday for not participating in Parvati and Neville's "wrestling Ron to the ground" approach to solving the problems that had arisen at the duelling club, applauded quietly. Seamus made a face at Dean, but he folded up the sketch neatly and put in in his pocket all the same.

* * *

><p>Elsewhere, Percy Weasley concluded an extended rant about the stupidity of the Hogwarts student body. He was very upset that even Ron, who had been getting much better about being sensible the previous year, was buying into the idea that Draco Malfoy was the Heir of Slytherin. Sure, he was a Malfoy and half a Black, and he was an obnoxious little snot, and he was often heard to express blood purist views, and his father had had a very public disagreement with the second victims' father, but ... "Draco Malfoy," said Percy, grinding his teeth, "is <em>twelve years old<em>."

Penelope burst out, annoyed, "At least that _sort of_ makes sense!"

"Compared to what?" asked Percy, raising an eyebrow.

"I've got a first-year - they all call her _Loony, _that should tell you something - who thinks she knows where the _Chamber of Secrets_ is." Penelope rolled her eyes. Luna had stopped trying to tell her that the Ministry of Magic was secretly run by saber-toothed squirrels and started trying to tell her that the Chamber of Secrets was a real place. Percy, who was firmly of the opinion that there was no Heir of Slytherin and it was just some Slytherin upperclassman being horrible, laughed darkly.

" ... Yeah, okay, you win that one," he said.

* * *

><p>The second-year Gryffindors left a little bit early for dinner, still feeling Madam Pince glaring at them through several aisles of bookshelves (or possibly that was the staring-contest one, you could never really be sure). Ernie and Susan of Hufflepuff, who had been lurking around for some reason, followed them out the door. "Hey, what were you guys doing?" asked Seamus curiously when he noticed them. "Usually you study in your common room, don't you?"<p>

"Yeah," said Ernie, looking a little awkward. "We were, um ... "

" ... following Malfoy," supplied Susan, who had evidently realized that Ernie didn't want to admit aloud to having been doing anything resembling skulking. "You know, to ... see if he does anything suspicious." But it would have been too obvious to go after him right when he and Ron had left, so they'd hung around awkwardly until all the Gryffindors left, and now they weren't really sure how to continue their quest to prove that Malfoy was attacking people, and had decided to give up and go to dinner with the others.

"Ah. Yeah, that makes sense," said Seamus agreeably, and everyone else nodded, and down the halls they went.

Consequently, the seven of them were the first to find Draco Malfoy standing in the middle of the second-floor corridor, wand pointed at a Petrified Justin Finch-Fletchley. Both students were shadowed by the frozen, soot-coloured, eerily still floating shape of Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington.

"HA! CAUGHT IN THE ACT!" yelled Ernie dramatically.

Draco didn't move.

" ... Um," said Ernie. He glanced at Susan. She shrugged helplessly.

Ron and Neville stepped carefully around the side of the hallway, wands drawn. "He's Petrified too," reported Neville after a moment, since Ron was too busy looking shocked, "and ... so's Sir Nicholas, I think?"

"I didn't know you could Petrify ghosts," said Parvati.

"I was pretty sure you couldn't?" said Susan, frowning.

"I hope he's okay," said Neville dubiously, poking at the ghost. "I'm not sure how anyone would feed him Mandrake Draught, if he _is _Petrified."

"Seamus, Parvati, go get McGonagall," said Ron, still looking shocked but capable of making decisions. They nodded and headed down the stairs towards the Transfiguration room, quickly but not at a run. You had to be about fourth-year before you could _run_ down Hogwarts' staircases without seriously injuring yourself. Ron continued, turning to the Hufflepuffs, "Macmillan, Bones, do you know what Finch-Fletchley was doing up here by himself?"

"I dunno, we told him to stay in the common room with Hannah," said Susan, looking troubled. "We were going to go get them before dinner. I mean, being pureblood obviously isn't a perfect protection," she glanced apologetically at Ron, "but in _theory _the primary target is Muggleborns, so we figured, better safe than sorry, you know? And ... apparently not." She sighed. "Sorry, Weasley, I've got nothing."

"We should check on Hannah," suggested Ernie, frowning uneasily.

"You should," agreed Ron. He glanced at Lavender and Dean, both Muggle-born, as Ernie and Susan hurried off with anxious expressions. "And you should probably get to dinner quickly, Lavender, Dean, same reason. Don't take any secret passages, those'll be easy for the attacker to hide in, just go straight to the Great Hall down the grand staircase." Looking a little nervous, they both nodded, and left in the opposite direction from the Hufflepuffs at a nervous sort of jog; and then Ron and Neville were alone with the new Petrified victims. "Alright," said Ron, "this is bloody ridiculous, how did _Malfoy_ get Petrified?"

"It could be a trick, I guess?" said Neville doubtfully. "I mean, to stop people suspecting him."

Ron frowned. While it was, as a general rule, good to assume the Malfoys were lying unless otherwise noted, Petrifying himself along with a Hufflepuff and a Gryffindor ghost didn't really seem like Malfoy's style. Also, that would presume that Malfoy was capable of Petrifying people on _purpose_, which frankly Ron had been assuming was not the case. "I think it's more likely," he said, "that if it _is _Malfoy, he didn't do this on purpose. Remember I told you how Hermione said Petrification happens when you screw up trying to kill people?"

"Oh, yeah," said Neville, who did remember that. "So you figure Malfoy tried to attack Finch-Fletchley, messed it up, got himself too?"

Nodding, Ron added, "I'm not sure how Sir Nicholas fits into that, though, I really didn't think you could Petrify a ghost even by accident ... "

"You can't," said Professor McGonagall. Ron and Neville both jumped about a foot and Ron narrowly prevented himself from pointing his wand at the Transfiguration professor, who had just arrived on the scene with a grim expression. Dean and Parvati came up behind her a moment later, panting, and looking somewhat impressed; McGonagall wasn't even winded. She raised her eyebrows at Ron.

"Sorry, professor," he said sheepishly. "So what's happened to Sir Nicholas, then, do you know?"

"I do not know, Mr. Weasley," said Professor McGonagall somewhat unhappily. "But I suspect that it means we must now assume that this is not merely the work of someone who wishes to appear more impressive by citing the name of Salazar." She Conjured a pair of floating stretchers, and frowned thoughtfully at Sir Nicholas. She wasn't even really looking at Ron, and Neville would later suspect that she'd briefly forgotten who she was talking to. "I think we must presume that the Chamber of Secrets has indeed been opened again." She'd Conjured a great white paper fan to move Sir Nicholas, and then paused, and frowned at the two Gryffindor boys, as if suddenly noticing they were still there. At once the Transfiguration professor gave them a severe look and said, "Go to dinner."

* * *

><p>"Again?" said Ron frustratedly as he and Neville paced down the steps, wands in hand and trying to pay attention to their surroundings. Seamus and Parvati were trailing them, still out of breath. "What did she mean, <em>again<em>? This has happened _before_?"

"If it's a power you get by being descended from Salazar Slytherin it would make sense that someone else has had it before now," said Neville reasonably. "I mean, you know, since Slytherin's great-great-great-whatever-grandson has a grandfather who was also descended from Slytherin and probably also went to Hogwarts." They clattered down the steps to the first floor, and put away their wands only as they went through the doors to the Great Hall. Dean and Lavender, safely at the Gryffindor table, waved at them. Neville continued, "Only then you'd expect it to happen about once a generation, right? So why isn't that what's happening?"

"Right," said Ron, frowning, "so either they're _hiding _it or they haven't all gone to Hogwarts." They sat down at the table; Parvati helpfully filled in Lavender and Dean on the subject under discussion.

"Is that common, families not all going to the same school?" asked Lavender curiously.

"Not really, no," said Neville. "I mean, not among pureblood families, at least, and at this point I think we can safely assume that's what we're talking about."

"So, assuming it's not Malfoy - " began Seamus.

"Of course it's not Malfoy," said Percy irritably as he walked by. Ron shot him a glare, which he ignored.

Seamus continued, sighing, " - assuming it's not Malfoy, we need somebody whose family hasn't gone to Hogwarts since the last time this happened, right? So when was that?"

"I think it'd have to have been sort of recently," said Parvati, "I mean, we couldn't find any records of this happening before, so Professor McGonagall would only know if she remembered it, wouldn't she?"

"That," said Ron, "is a really good point, does anyone know how old McGonagall is?"

" ... about the same age as my Gran?" hazarded Neville, who was vaguely aware that his grandmother and his Transfiguration professor were slightly-antagonistic friends.

"In which case our new plan should _definitely_ be for you to write to your Gran," said Ron immediately, "and ask her about it."

Neville nodded. "No promises," he said, "but I'll ask."

* * *

><p>Rubeus Hagrid did not appear at the Christmas feast.<p>

Neither did Headmaster Dumbledore.


	47. Self-Preservation

It seemed like Dumbledore's absence should have made the school grind to a halt.

Lucius Malfoy and the Board of Governors had removed the headmaster from his position shortly after the news got out that Draco Malfoy had been Petrified, and at the same time Rubeus Hagrid had been arrested and taken to Azkaban. A fight had broken out at breakfast the day following. Various Gryffindors, of couse, insisted with varying levels of loudness that Hagrid was obviously innocent. Then, various Slytherins insulted them and/or insulted Hagrid. Then Anthony Goldstein gave an extended lecture about probability mass and priors, and how you never wanted to be _not paranoid enough_. Then half the Hufflepuff table started yelling about the unfairness of making any decisions without real proof, and most of Ravenclaw got up in arms in Anthony's defense about the difference between _most likely_ and _100% sure. _Then Theodore Nott rolled his eyes at everyone and said that his father and Lord Malfoy probably _were _100% sure or they wouldn't have gotten rid of Dumbledore; and the mention of Dumbledore had set off the rest of Gryffindor, at which point the entire Great Hall had dissolved into bad jinxes and flying food.

But McGonagall and Snape yelled at everyone, and when that didn't work they started casting paralysis hexes, and everyone went to class.

The school, somehow, did not come to any sort of halt, grinding or otherwise.

Neville Longbottom wrote a letter to his grandmother. OWL students studied for their looming exams. Luna Lovegood was caught in the library after hours and assigned a truly ridiculous amount of detention. Ron and Percy Weasley stopped talking to each other, which was widely considered an improvement upon the periodic yelling which had previously been taking place. Colin Creevey blew up his cauldron trying to develop too many pictures of Professor Lockhart and lost a rather staggering number of House points when he showed up for Potions class without one. Daphne Greengrass missed a week of classes and refused to tell anyone why, even her cousin Blaise, and Padma Patil who occasionally had civil conversations with Pansy Parkinson told her twin sister that some of the Slytherins thought Daphne had had a nervous breakdown about the upcoming second-year exams, which hadn't happened to anyone outside of Ravenclaw in _years. _Ginny Weasley broke the first-year obstacle course record, beating the previous record-holder (her brother Charlie) by almost thirty seconds.

And classes went on.

* * *

><p><em>January 1, 1993<em>

_Dear Mr. Weasley,_

_For reasons I cannot safely explain, I cannot further discuss with you the problem of the Heir of Slytherin. Please do not inquire. _

_I highly recommend the entire _Staple Spells _series. If you're interested in defense in particular, _Fundamentals of Abjuration _by Elminster Gygax is a particularly good place to start; I've got complete enough notes from my copy that I don't need it, so you can borrow it if Hogwarts hasn't got one. _

_Hermione Granger_

_p.s. if you can find and send me a Gryffindor scarf, I will consider the wrong you did me to have been repaid. _

* * *

><p><em>January 12, 1993<em>

_[enclosed: a red-and-gold striped scarf, and Apparition coordinates for the Burrow]_

_Dear Hermione, _

_I'm not going to ask who's threatening you, because that would be stupid, but ... my Mum won't turn you away, if you need help. _

_I also won't ask you to comment, but in case you need to know: Draco Malfoy, Justin Finch-Fletchley, and Nearly Headless Nick got Petrified. Hagrid's been arrested and Dumbledore's gone. _

_I would like to borrow that book, I can't find it in the library. _

_Ron Weasley_

* * *

><p><em>January 23, 1993<em>

_[enclosed: a well-worn copy of Elminster Gygax's _Fundamentals of Abjuration_, fourth edition] _

_Dear Ron, _

_Thank you. _

_Hermione Granger_

* * *

><p>One day early in February, Ron Weasley paused after Transfiguration class, lagging to pause by Professor McGonagall's desk. The rest of the second-year Gryffindors exchanged glances and threw hand gestures, then four of them left with the Hufflepuffs, leaving Parvati Patil (the odd one out this time, one parchment to two wands and two stones) leaning on the doorframe with a faintly curious expression. The Transfiguration professor said, bemused, "What was that, Miss Patil?"<p>

"Odd one out has to babysit Ron," said Parvati, smiling in a way that indicated this was the sort of duty you performed for people because you cared about their well-being, not because you _had_ to. She explained, "He's not actually talking to any of us, because apparently he is too serious for talking," she rolled her eyes pointedly, "but we have to make sure he, you know, eats and goes to class and so on, instead of just spending every waking hour reading spellbooks."

"I see," said Professor McGonagall, blinking. She turned her gaze on the redheaded boy standing in front of her desk. "What can I do for you, Mr. Weasley?"

* * *

><p><em>February 11, 1993<em>

_Dear Neville, _

_I assume the incident to which you refer, which occurred during my final year at Hogwarts and when Minerva was Head Girl, was the death of Miss Myrtle Durand. At the time the death was pinned on Rubeus Hagrid, but I assure you this is blatant falsehood. That boy was no more competent at thirteen than he is now; I don't think he could have murdered a mouse, much less a classmate. Rumours, naturally, abound, particularly among Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, that Myrtle's death was the work of the so-called Slytherin's Monster, but if any of my classmates had been so fortunate as to possess the ability to summon such a creature, I do not believe any of them would have been able to keep the information to themselves. We, at any rate, concluded at the time that Headmaster Dippet wanted an excuse to expel Hagrid, and picked a not-terribly-popular student against whom to fabricate evidence of assault so that he could at the same time be used as a scapegoat. It was terribly suspicious, you understand, that Myrtle should have died rather than been Petrified like the others, and Alphard Black (quite rightly, I think) suggested that this was probably not the intended result. Armando Dippet was exactly the sort of buffoon who would accidentally kill a student in the middle of trying to be as clever as his predecessor. _

_It would have been impolite at the time to discuss seriously who was actually Petrifying people - for reasons I have explained to you before, the phrase "Were you the one who ..." is verboten in Slytherin House - but if I had to, I would have guessed Abraxas Malfoy and Arcturus Black. Now that this has begun again, I am suspicious indeed. No, Neville, I did not know that this was happening, or I would have done something a good deal sooner - Hogwarts has always been a rather insular place, and since the incident with your Muggleborn friend, that can only have become more true. I am sure I would have recieved a letter if you had been hospitalised, but not before; so I must commend you for having the unexpected sense to write me yourself. _

_I will investigate this further; Abraxas and Arcturus are not available to be questioned, but I would not be surprised to find that they had set some curse to trigger upon the event of their deaths. In the meantime, do not neglect your studies; I should be terribly disapppointed not to see again the horror your first-year exam results produced in Algernon. You wouldn't want to disappoint your grandmother, would you, Neville? _

_A. M. Longbottom_

* * *

><p>Ron and Parvati are half an hour late to lunch, where they find Neville petting an imperious and slightly lethal-looking Great Horned Owl with feathers precisely the shade of his hair, staring somewhat bemusedly at a piece of parchment in his hand.<p>

"Guys," says Parvati, not waiting until she's sat down next to Lavender to start talking excitedly, "Ron convinced McGonagall to let us - "

Seamus interrupted her. "Did you know Neville's gran was a _Slytherin_?"

"Um, yes," said Parvati, blinking, "she wears green, like, _all the time_. Now as I was saying - "

"Did you know Moaning Myrtle was a student? Like, _recently_?" said Lavender.

"I mean, I guess I figured she can't've been _that_ old or she'd sound all old-fashioned like Sir Nicholas," said Parvati, confused. "Why?"

"She's the one that died fifty years ago, like when McGonagall said this happened _before__ -_ " began Lavender excitedly.

" - and even she _totally_ thinks it was Malfoy," Seamus said, "or, like, his granddad - "

"They tried to blame _Hagrid_," said Neville, still staring at the parchment, looking horrified. "That's why he's not allowed to do magic."

"Okay, alright, that's fascinating," said Parvati, "but you guys - "

"If the Petrification _is _what's supposed to happen it can't be Malfoy, though, right?" said Dean. "Unless he did it to himself on purpose, I guess."

"Not if it wasn't actually _him_, I mean, if it was his dad or his granddad or whoever like Neville's gran says," pointed out Seamus.

Lavender added, in tones of great excitement, "_And _that makes sense because like - " she glanced down the table at Percy Weasley, engrossed in a book - "like _some people _said, our Malfoy is too young, it makes way more sense if it's one of his older relatives."

"Guys," said Parvati, sighing.

"What about," Dean said, glancing consideringly at the Slytherin table, "Nott? He's real quiet, he doesn't take orders from Malfoy, and remember when we were talking about how it had to be somebody where their whole family didn't go to Hogwarts? I heard one of them mention before Potions last week that he's got a cousin who goes to Durmstrang."

"I think we should wait to draw conclusions until my Gran investigates," said Neville, folding up the letter and putting it carefully in his pocket.

"_Guys_," said Parvati.

"What?" said Lavender.

"Ron convinced McGonagall to let us use her classroom for duelling practice!"

"_What_?"

* * *

><p>Every Thursday evening, without fail, the second-year Gryffindors met in the Transfiguration classroom, instead of the library. Sometimes a spectacled cat lurked and watched with interest as they stumbled their way through jinxes and low-level shields. All three Weasleys were quiet and grim lately, weighed down by the absence of the twins, but here Ron Weasley came alive again.<p>

It was a little bit alarming, that these children - they were twelve, a few of them thirteen - felt they needed to know how to fight.

But it also made Minerva McGonagall terribly proud of her students.

* * *

><p>"Hey, Weasley!"<p>

Ginny made a high-pitched yelping noise and immediately hated herself for it; she turned towards the unfamiliar voice, wincing, as Demelza and Colin gave her curious looks. Inspection yielded the strange information that the person speaking was the imperious blonde Slytherin second-year who'd been apparently nonexistent all of last week. The girl whose father Definitely Had Not modified the memories of the entire student body a few years ago, who apparently hadn't even told Blaise Zabini - her _cousin_ - what had incapacitated her in such a way that she hadn't even been in the hospital wing. There were rumours she'd been at St. Mungo's, or at home. There were really outlandish rumours that she'd been on the Moon, and only slightly less outlandish rumours that she'd been in Azkaban. Her return had, at least, quashed most of the rumours that she was the Heir of Slytherin.

She had a familiar black book in her left hand, and Ginny suddenly had a horrible sinking feeling that she knew exactly what had happened to Daphne Greengrass.

"What?" she managed, her throat as dry as if she'd swallowed a torch.

"Found your diary. Thought you might want it back," said Daphne, and Ginny registered vaguely, in the back of her mind, that the tone was slightly too even, slightly too practiced, slightly too forced. She would remember, much later, and feel guilty for hating the girl who couldn't have stopped herself holding out the book any more than Ginny could have stopped herself reaching out to take it.

At the time, the only thing she could feel was terror.

But she smiled, and said, "Thank you," and put the diary in her bookbag, and turned and walked away.

_What do you want,_

_**Oh, sweet Ginevra, your idiocy always astounds me. What do you think I want?**  
><em>

_I **w**a**n**t yo**u**r bro**thers. **_


	48. The Endless Usefulness of Libraries

_February 9, 1993_

_Dear Hermione,_

_Don't ask why, but do you have any way of checking if there's any British pureblood families that haven't gone to Hogwarts in a couple of decades?_

_We can't find any decent genealogies in our library, Neville says he thinks they got banned or sent to the Restricted Section around when Dumbledore took over. So teachers couldn't discriminate between their pureblood and non-pureblood students, which is a great goal and everything but it's really not helping us right now._

_Hope you had a nice winter holiday. _

_Ron Weasley_

* * *

><p>On Valentines' Day of 1993, Hogwarts was covered in pink paper hearts and irritated dwarf-cupids.<p>

This was not enjoyed by any of the authority figures, other than the dubiously-authoritative Professor Lockhart. Headmaster Dumbledore, after all, was not there to look politely amused and encourage his teachers to play along. (He, in addition to technically not being allowed on the grounds, was busy trying to prevent anyone _other_ than Lucius Malfoy from finding out that things were getting a little bit out of hand at Hogwarts. Lucius Malfoy had a somewhat terrifying ability to know what was going on in places he had no right knowing anything about, but Molly Weasley had been told Fred and George had an accident practicing Charms, and no one had any intention of telling the Finch-Fletchleys anything at all.)

Professor Snape deducted House points from no fewer than a dozen students who were stupid enough to offer him valentines, many of whom were actually in his own House. He also devoted one-third of every single one of his classes to giving a very acerbic lecture about love potions and how, contrary to Professor Lockhart's idiotic suggestion, they were _not _acceptable ways of earning affection. He would _not _teach anyone how to make them, students were _not _permitted to use them, and he would _personally hospitalize _anyone who was so unbelievably stupid as to try.

Professor McGonagall hexed at least thirty dwarves who were trying to deliver the bloody things in her classroom, and all her afternoon classes had to awkwardly congregate outside her door as she one-by-one let them through the shields she'd erected to keep out the weirdly determined letter-delivery system.

Professor Burbage had most of her classes derailed by overwrought Shakespeare.

Professor Sprout had to dedicate most of her afternoon classes to cleaning paper out of the Mandrake pots, and although no one could actually hear anything she was saying through the Necessarily Fluffy Safety Earmuffs, most of her students somewhat suspected there was profanity taking place.

Professor Sinistra was observed to show up for lunch (she usually slept through breakfast), look around in confusion and terror, and promptly turn around and go back out the doors; Professor Vector was noted to miss several of her afternoon classes and was later found sitting in the Astronomy Tower trying to convinced the apparently dwarf-phobic Astronomy Professor to open her well-barred door and eat something ("I am not coming out until those _monstrosities _are gone!").

Professor Flitwick's infinite patience eroded slowly over the course of the day, which mostly looked like his voice getting progressively higher-pitched and the other professors edging subtly away from him. At dinnertime he was to be found sitting at the Ravenclaw House table rather than the faculty table, glowing a rather unhealthy shade of blue and very calmly eating potatoes. A few of his prefects were sustaining a fairly powerful Silencing Sphere to a radius of about six feet from their Head of House on all sides, and giving anyone who showed signs of approaching him very sharp looks.

Professor Kettleburn tried to feed a pair of Cupids to an enormous salamander and would have lit his classroom on fire, except that his classroom had been fireproofed some number of years ago after the Fire Crab Incident.

Professor Babbling had failed to warn his students of the dangers of writing love letters in runes, and suffered a number of explosions in his classroom which was actually, for the first time in years, larger than the number in Kettleburn's.

The wizard having the _worst_ Valentines' Day, however, was not any of the Professors of Hogwarts, nor any of its students.

* * *

><p>Around noon on Valentines' Day of 1993, Lucius Malfoy walked into the library at Malfoy Manor, intending to look for historical references to Slytherin's Monster, and was totally distracted from that problem when he discovered it was occupied. Rather than empty tables and carefully organized shelves, the library was currently occupied by a bald wizard with severe black robes and a close-cropped white beard, a green-robed witch with white curls and tiny spectacles, and a disordered pile of what looked like every curse-breaking book the Malfoys owned. Two black cloaks were hung up neatly by the door, one with a purple half-moon pin and the other underneath a ridiculous feathered hat.<p>

"You blithering idiot," Augusta Longbottom was saying, "there's no _circle_ if it's anchored on a person, nothing to disrupt. Give me that."

"Hidebound old bitch," retorted Jared Nott, shoving the indicated text across the cluttered table. "I can make a circle."

Okay. So Augusta Longbottom and Jared Nott were in his library arguing about something. That was new and unexpected. Lucius had several separate reasons to be alarmed by this. First of all, the fact that Old Nott was his uncle did not actually prevent him from being terrifying, and when he was eight years old he'd watched Madam Longbottom win an exhibition duel against _Alastor Moody,_ albeit narrowly. Second, he hadn't seen Nott since his father died, and he'd actually gone to a special effort to _specifically_ defend the Manor against _Jared Nott in particular_, because the man had never liked him; and here he was anyway. Third, Lucius hadn't actually exchanged more than a handful of barely-civil words with Augusta Longbottom nee Fawcett since before the start of the War, and he was pretty sure Nott hadn't either.

And did people not think it was polite to _ask_?

"Oh, yes, break a curse by casting another one you'll also have to break, _that's_ the efficient way to do things. Of course. Obviously," said Augusta, scribbling something on a piece of parchment and picking up a different book. It looked like they were simply working _near _one another, not actually working on the same project; their primary interaction aside from insulting each other, Lucius suspected, was stealing each others' reference books.

"_You _apparently don't even know what kind of curse you're trying to break," growled Jared, "so kindly keep your sarcasm to yourself."

"You _do_ know what you're breaking," said Augusta cheerfully, "and I'm still making more progress than you."

"I hate you," said Jared, quite conversationally.

Lucius noticed that he was staring blankly at them, and that they were ignoring him utterly. He reminded himself sharply that although these were his father's contemporaries, he was _Lord Malfoy _and they were in _his house._ And besides that, he had work to do, he needed to find out what had gone wrong with that book ... his father had told him that if ten years went by without the Dark Lord returning, he was to give it to someone young, impressionable, and disposable, and, quote, the _Mudbloods would be purged as they so greatly deserve_, unquote, and that was ... evidently _not _what was happening at Hogwarts. The annoyance of dealing with this new problem on top of the previous one, after a moment's contemplation, supplied him the required aggression, and he said in what he hoped was a passably imperious tone, "What _exactly_ is going on here?"

They both looked up.

"None of your business," said Augusta calmly.

None of his - !

"You are in _my library_," said Lucius.

"This is Brax's library," corrected Jared in tones of polite dismissal. "It's yours when you can defend it, and not before."

"Ex_cuse _m - "

Equally calmly, and with no change of expression, Jared said, "Out, or I'll hex you."

That he couldn't just let go by. Not in his house, or he'd lose all credibility. You couldn't just let people order you around in your own house when you were a Lord of the Wizengamot, not even people much older than you who quite possibly had more money than you did. So Lucius drew his wand from his cane. Or, he tried to, at any rate; before he could even point it at either of them, it went sailing into the air. To his credit, Lucius managed not to make any undignified yelping sounds in response. But Jared, who could move much faster than his arthritic joints should have indicated, still snatched the flying wand from the air before Lucius could make any attempt at retrieving it. Smirking, he handed it to Augusta - who apparently could draw _and _cast a Disarming Jinx faster than Lucius could draw - and said, "That. That is why I tolerate you."

"Oh, _you_ tolerate _me,_" said Augusta, rolling her eyes and sliding Lucius' wand up her sleeve along with her own. "I taught you half the hexes you know. Little Malfoy, you can have your wand back if you fetch me a cup of tea."

Lucius Malfoy did not have a pleasant Valentines' Day.

* * *

><p>Hermione had a reasonably pleasant Valentines' Day at Durmstrang. This was largely because it was only loosely recognized as a holiday at all, being English in origin. Some of the Scandinavian students were going about giving people chocolate, and someone - possibly Adriana's brother - had managed to coordinate the appearance of a great bouquet of flowers above the Headmaster's chair, but it was altogether a relatively low-key event. The vast majority of the day, for Hermione, was spent sitting in the library with Viktor - doing homework, drinking tea, and completely ignoring the explosion that had resulted from Natasha giving Jarek a red rose and then running off bright-red and refusing to talk to him. Adriana kept wandering past the library door, snickering; Viktor suggested, amused, that she was probably playing messenger owl.<p>

She was well past caught up, now; there were few things more effective at motivating dedicated studying than the raw terror of being assassinated by one's ostensible family members. Getting through the winter break had been almost entirely adrenaline and fear, for Hermione. She'd spent two hours every morning trying to force her hair to lie flat and black and _unrecognizable_, and then sat at breakfast with Theo and been lectured about proper etiquette and how to act appropriately superior. They'd gone to more gatherings of High Society than she could count, and she had to have a different dress and different shoes and different jewelry for each one. Thankfully, she did not have to break her previous personal decision not to wear any green: They didn't let her wear red, because Gryffindor, but almost everything the Notts owned was either black or purple, or occasionally dark gray. She didn't get to _keep_ any of the ridiculously expensive jewelry, of course, but all the same she'd had to memorize what each one was made of and where it had come from ("Oh, this? Antipodean opals, of course, it belonged to my great-grandmother"), and the only bright side of this was that she now had an arsenal of totally useless information about gemstone classification. Also, she'd learned that she was absolutely terrible at walking in high heels, because despite her grades she was in fact only thirteen. She almost didn't hate Theo anymore, even though he was a self-righteous snarky git, because he had fast reflexes, and had caught her by the arm before she tripped down the stairs at Malfoy Manor.

She had not had the misfortune of having to convince Draco Malfoy that he had never met her before, because he was apparently staying at Hogwarts for the Christmas break, for reasons unexplained. All the same, it had still felt _unbelievably weird _to be following Theo around while he smugly showed off "My genius cousin who goes to Durmstrang," because she knew perfectly well that all the people shaking her hand and nodding and congratulating her on her grades would happily put her head on a spike if they found out who she was. Worse, she knew perfectly well that Theo and his father would be first in line, if her grades slipped or she stopped generating enough status boost to be worth the effort. So she smiled and shook hands and introduced herself "Hermione Nott, fourth-year at Durmstrang." And when Ally Runcorn made a snide comment about how she was much more interesting than the Mudblood girl of the same name who'd dropped out of Hogwarts the previous year, she laughed as offhandedly as possible and offered a pre-prepared joke about Muggles trying to sound intelligent by stealing Shakespearan names.

Easily the most terrifying part of the vacation, however, had been the reason she'd had to awkwardly write to Ron Weasley that she couldn't help him with his Heir of Slytherin problem, once she had returned and could borrow a school owl. Millicent Bulstrode, wondering why so many of the Slytherins had stayed over the break, had brought up the Chamber of Secrets. Daphne Greengrass had said something dismissive about _certain people _wanting to make it clear that they did not fear the Monster, and then she'd cut herself off mid-sentence as Lucius Malfoy swept down upon the gathering of young students. Lord Malfoy, teeth grinding, had threatened to have them all murdered in their sleep if they were ever so stupid as to bring up the subject again. Apparently, it was _very bad practice _to discuss such things with anyone, because if you _were _responsible you didn't want anyone to find out, and if you _weren't _responsible it was in your best interest to know _as little as possible _so as not to be blamed. Theo had asked his father about it later, and Old Nott had been if possible _even more terrifying _about it, and Hermione had concluded that she was probably in immediate danger if she continued to be involved in any way.

Eventually on the last day of the holiday she'd been given a stern look and shooed off to catch a Portkey, and only once back in her dorm room for several hours did her heart rate measurably decline.

By the fourteenth of February she was as relaxed as she was capable of being, which wasn't actually very much. She'd not only caught up, she'd started getting well ahead of her class again. She was seriously considering trying to figure out how to skip ahead a further year, and catch up to Viktor (or get close - he _was _the highest-scoring student in _his _year). Durmstrang students took OWLs at the end of their sixth year, not their fifth, and if she could do them _next_ year she'd be on track for NEWTs the year after next and then she could - ... well ... - Okay, admittedly she wasn't actually sure what she'd do next, if she earned her NEWTs before she turned sixteen. She wasn't anything like stupid enough to assume that standard student qualifications, even the highest ones you could earn from Durmstrang, would be sufficient to defend herself against a century-old wizard who'd survived since Grindelwald's war. So she'd either have to continue being conspicuously useful and/or scholarly, or she'd have to run away very far. Somewhere in her copious free time she'd have to look up whether wizards had anything resembling _universities_ ...

* * *

><p><em>March 1, 1993<em>

_[enclosed: Elminster Gygax's _An Intermediate Course in Abjuration_, fourth edition, and Cantankerous Nott's updated _The Sacred Twenty-Eight_,_ _eighty-ninth edition with birthdays and lineage charts_]

_Dear Ron,  
><em>

_Happy birthday. _

_(Your birthday shows up as soon as the eighty-sixth edition, 1980. Did you know some of them are self-updating?) _

_The Gygax book is your birthday present. I'll need the genealogy back at some point, though, sorry - I hope it helps with your mysterious project. _

_Hermione Granger_

* * *

><p>(It took her weeks to stop freaking out about how<em> Hermione Genevieve Nott, September 12, 1979 - present<em>, was actually in the self-updating geneologies, with her attendance at Durmstrang and everything, listed right across from her cousin _Theodore Andreas Nott, January 29, 1980 - present _and his status as a Hogwarts student. Apparently her elderly "great-uncle" knew how to meddle with whatever enchantments those ran on. Which was, frankly, terrifying.)

* * *

><p>"<em>How <em>old are you again?" asked Jarek of Hermione one day, bemused, around the time her friends had collectively noticed that she was drifting pretty far forward in the curriculum. She was to the point of getting Viktor to tell her what his assignments were so that she could attempt them. Just that day she'd pulled seven out of ten fighting Natasha in Battle Magic class, which was a personal best; her cheery Russian roommate was slightly put out, but mostly impressed at the progress Hermione was making, given that she was noticeably smaller than everyone else in the class, even the tiny Korean girl. (The _oh my god she's so cute_ had declined slightly, but ... only slightly, especially since she was failing utterly to keep her hair in check again now that she wasn't spending hours every morning trying vainly to flatten it. Adriana had started calling her _minunăţie,_ usually with affectionate headpats, which honestly was kind of sweet and Hermione didn't mind it.)

"Thirteen," she said absently, and went back to practicing shield charms.


	49. April Fools

_March 12, 1993_

_[enclosed: Cantankerous Nott's The Sacred Twenty-Eight, eighty-ninth edition]_

_Dear Hermione,_

_Thank you for the book! I've never gotten a book for my birthday before. I didn't know there were so many different kinds of shields. Our Defense professor this year is absolutely useless, even worse than Quirrell was. The guy's written books - Gilderoy Lockhart, you might've heard of him - and he can't even Stun a pixie. We spend all his classes reading stories out of his stupid books and not actually doing anything, we're learning so little that we don't even really know what we don't know. You've been a lot of help with that, we have a better idea now of what to look for in the library, so thank you! We've got notes and stuff, now, too, not just from the one I'm returning with this letter - do you also need your Fundamentals book back?_

_Ron Weasley_

* * *

><p><em>March 26, 1993<em>

_Ron - _

_Yes, please. _

_HJG_

* * *

><p>Ordinarily, Hogwarts was a great fan of April Fools' Day. The Slytherins and the Ravenclaws largely liked to pretend they were too mature for that kind of thing, though some of the Ravenclaws occasionally devolved into extremely elaborate prank wars if someone thought of something that was too clever not to do. Among the Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors, however, it was usually an explosion of bright colors, peculiar sounds, and giggling; there was a running contest to see who could make Dumbledore laugh the hardest. Ordinarily, the castle glittered and shone with enthusiasm on that particular day of the year, and the halls echoed with the bright booming sound of the headmaster laughing. The contest had been cancelled without fanfare, this year, because Dumbledore wasn't here.<p>

Some of the Hufflepuffs still made a valiant effort to cheer up the student body in the absence of their friendly Headmaster, because that was what they did, but their friendly rivals in Gryffindor didn't even really try.

The first of April, after all, was Fred and George Weasley's birthday. There was usually cake, and singing, and increasingly absurd magical tricks. For more than the two years since they'd started school, even - it had been happening since Bill Weasley's first year, seven years previously, when his six-year-old brothers had somehow contrived to send him a cheery Howler full of glitter. It was the one day every year that the elder and more serious Weasleys would smile and indulge their brothers' silliness, and encourage their classmates to do the same. After all, the twins were never malicious. They didn't have it in them to be really _mean_ for such a friendly holiday. It was always funny, reasonably benevolent things, like "suddenly you have feathers" and "the stairs are temporarily pillows, let's go banister-diving" and "everyone is ginger today!" and that sort of thing. Or maybe the food at the Slytherin table exploded in showers of sparkly red paint (that had been their first year), which wasn't much fun for the Slytherins, but it wasn't like anyone got hurt. And even some of the Slytherins (the ones that had ducked quickly) had found some humor in the situation. _  
><em>

This year, the Weasley twins were in the hospital wing, silent and mirthless, and no one in Gryffindor House really felt right trying to have April Fools' Day _without _them. So there was silence in Gryffindor, and strained smiles in the direction of the friendly Hufflepuffs who tried to cheer them up. Ron got up early and spent the morning in the greenhouses with Neville, doing what he could to help with the Mandrakes who would awaken the Petrified students. Ginny sat at breakfast humming sadly, and Percy sat next to her with his book of curses and sang quietly along. _Happy birthday to Fred, happy birthday to George, happy birthday ... you're not here ... happy birthday to you._

* * *

><p>Lucius Malfoy spent his April first trying to break the locks on his library door, accompanied by the faint sound of scratching quills and the slightly less faint sound of Jared Nott and Augusta Longbottom bickering about rune charts. Honestly, he had no idea how they hadn't tried to kill each other yet.<p>

* * *

><p>Hermione Granger-now-Nott, on the other hand, whose voracious interest in protection magic for reasons she refused to explain to anyone, had made her more than only the top student in her Battle Magic class. She was, by now, also the go-to expert on cursebreaking for anyone at Durmstrang who lost a duel or failed to dodge a prank and was too embarrassed to go to the Life Magic professor for help; and so she had a very amusing April Fools' Day. She spent most of the day taking apart various very creative hexes, ranging from a plague of unusually stubborn tongue-tying jinxes among some of the younger students to a sixth-year whose ex-boyfriend had turned all of his clothes a truly eye-searing shade of neon yellow. "You know you could be asking them for favors<em>,<em>" said Adriana around two hours past lunchtime, when she and Jarek had dragged Hermione to the Hearths-hall to make her eat. "No one would think it unfair."

"It's good practice," protested Hermione. "And I like helping people."

Her roommate sighed. "British idealism, ah. Strange and cute. Jarek, where are Viktor and Natasha?"

"Why should I know?" protested the Icelander, shooing away a seventh-year with his ears smoking who really ought to know how to solve his own problems. At the totally incredulous looks from the two girls, which said, _you literally keep obsessive charts of the entire school's whereabouts, of course you know where they are, _he sighed. "Third floor. Some absolute _idiot_ carved a bunch of Grindelwaldian iconography into the walls."

"Ah."

The news that anyone at Durmstrang still thought Grindelwald had been in the _right _was, sadly, not surprising to Hermione. She hadn't read as much history as she might have liked, however, so busy had she been with her frantic quest to learn to defend herself, and she had no idea what _Grindelwaldian iconography_ might actually look like or how one went about recognizing it. Nor did she have any idea how to ask without looking like an idiot, so she just filed the question away for later inquiry. At some point. And the others did return eventually for their lunch, looking rather pleased with themselves.

After her Languages class, a little first-year came running up to them, tears running down his face. His hands were bruised and disjointed, as if someone had stomped on them. "Miss Nott," he said shakily, pleading, "can you help me?"

Natasha said something absolutely scathing in Russian, which Hermione could not immediately translate but recognized the general tone of. "No," she added for good measure. Jarek sneered in the kid's general direction and didn't bother to address him, Viktor outright pretended he wasn't there, and Adriana rolled her eyes.

Hermione, startled, said, "What? Of course I can help you, sweetie, what happened?"

"I - um - "

"He fell down the _stairs,_" said Natasha, her voice high and sharp and mocking.

It had been a long time since Hermione heard so clearly the alarm bells in her head that said, _you have made friends with people who are evil_.

* * *

><p>Still, school had to struggle on, without its gamekeeper and without its Headmaster. Professor McGonagall was looking increasingly frazzled; as Deputy Headmistress she was obligated to take on the duties that Dumbledore wasn't performing due to his summary eviction from the premises. The forest edged glacially closer to Hagrid's hut, unchecked by his usual maintenance; Professor Sprout started setting her sixth-years to the task of calming down some of the flora on the grounds that <em>wasn't <em>contained neatly in greenhouses. OWLs and NEWTs for the fifth and seventh years were approaching, slowly but surely. Early in April Ravenclaw scraped out a victory over Slytherin by only twenty points, putting them just barely in the lead for the Quidditch Cup. Luna Lovegood presented a very startled Cho Chang with a bright blue feathered hat, and then ran off to the library again before the Ravenclaw Seeker could respond properly to this bizarre prize.

Some of the sixth-year NEWT Defense students put on a tournament of exhibition duels near the end of the month. Percy Weasley declined to participate, even though he _was _one of the three students in his cohort who'd actually managed to pass the Defense OWL the previous year, but he showed up anyway. Many other students appeared in the Great Hall to watch or to try their hand at fighting Hogwarts' ostensible best; there were few enough people in the actual class that they'd let other people sign up to participate, like Cedric Diggory who was still in fourth year but was far and away the top of his class, and Jack Rosier who had failed his OWL but knew a truly ridiculous number of curses, and so on. It took hours for the other second-year Gryffindors to talk Ron out of volunteering, and it only eventually worked because Neville pointed out that his mother would probably actually ground him until he graduated Hogwarts if she found out.

But they did turn up for the show, anyway, because they couldn't not. And predictably, getting a bunch of kids together in the Great Hall with the express purpose of having a duelling competition started to produce unsanctioned fighting almost immediately. Although, in defense of the NEWT students, it actually happened _slightly_ less quickly than it had at Lockhart's original attempt. Still ... people using unapproved spells, people punching each other, people on the sidelines fighting over who they wanted to win or who they'd bet on ... they were barely a quarter of the way through the randomized tournament brackets (supplied by an amused NEWT Arithmancy student who was dating one of the organizers) when things started to get out of hand. Lockhart, of course, was useless to handle this, and Professor Flitwick had his hands full playing host for the people from the Auror Office who'd turned up to watch the show. _  
><em>

_Ron_ of course was busy fighting with Draco's erstwhile minions, who were a bit lost without their leader but nevertheless basically understood that they were supposed to oppose the nearest Weasley wherever convenient. The _rest _of the second-year Gryffindors, however, calmly edged the rest of the crowd away from this conflict, stood in a little ring separating Ron and Crabbe and Goyle from everyone else, and thereafter ignored the problem. Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass, who'd also turned up to watch the show, participated reasonably amiably in this process; they clearly were more interested in preventing Crabbe and Goyle from embarrassing their House than they were in actually preventing them from getting hexed repeatedly by Ron. Various awkward nods were exchanged, and the Slytherins seemed to appreciate that none of the Gryffindors were commenting on the somewhat anxious way Blaise was keeping an eye on his unusually pale and quiet cousin.

In between uncomfortable House relations, and occasionally paying attention to the actual competition that was taking place, they got to watch Percy. He was a head taller than most of the other students, now; he had the same too-tall-and-too-skinny build as Ron did, and four more years of growing. It ought to have been ridiculous-looking to see him stalking around in his obsessively pressed robes, wireframe glasses glinting in the light of spellfire, with his bright red hair and freckles, looming over everyone like an awkward, irritable scarecrow. It _would_ have been funny, probably, except that he was breaking up unauthorized fights with absolute silence, complete lack of discrimination by age, gender, or House, and absolutely brutal efficiency. "Ah," said Parvati, watching with interest as Percy disarmed yet another pair of bickering would-be gamblers, glued their wands to the nearest wall, and moved on without a word, "_that's _why he didn't sign up to fight."

"I had the impression he just didn't believe in duelling," said Blaise.

Parvati shrugged. "Well, that too."

"Diggory's _winning_," observed Lavender, who was actually still paying attention to the competition.

"What, the Super Hufflepuff?" said Seamus, startled. "Really? Isn't he only, what, fourth year?"

"The _Super Hufflepuff_?" repeated Neville.

Seamus gave him a confused look. "You haven't heard that? You spend practially all of your free time with Professor Sprout."

" ... I have never heard that," agreed Neville. "Seriously? People call him that?"

"Yeah," said Lavender. "He gets perfect grades, he's on their Quidditch team, he's probably going to be their Captain next year, he's taking _all_ the electives and _still _getting perfect grades, he runs tutoring sessions, he's ridiculously nice to everyone ... he's a Super Hufflepuff."

"And also he can duel, apparently," said Parvati.

"That's not fair," grumbled Seamus. "He can't be good at _everything_."

"Maybe he's secretly gay," suggested Daphne.

Everyone else gave her a baffled look. "Would that be bad?" said Dean, eyebrows rising.

"It'd be bad for the _girls_," snickered Blaise.

* * *

><p>"Luna," said Ginny patiently, "this is just some prank by the Slytherins. There is no such thing as the Chamber of Secrets."<p>

* * *

><p>A bespectacled cat slipped in the door of the Hog's Head Inn and hopped smoothly onto the bar. She padded across the surface and snagged a couple of peanuts off the bartender's plate. He rolled his eyes and scratched her behind the ears, which treatment she suffered with a somewhat stern glare before hopping back off the bar and gliding into the shadowy rear of the room. "Cats, mate, can't get rid of 'em," he said cheerily to the one wizard currently sitting at the bar, who didn't show any particular signs of being interested in the proceedings.<p>

A moment later, a stern-backed, grey-haired woman with a pointed green tartan hat was sitting politely across a table from a tall wizard with long white hair and dark purple robes, having drawn exactly zero attention as she crossed the room. "Good evening," she said, refraining from addressing the subject of her attention by name. Aberforth had a thing about that, and in any case it was usually best not to draw the ears of people who might be _interested _if they heard the name of the headmaster who was currently banned from the premises of the school. Hogsmeade wasn't actually part of Hogwarts grounds, but all the same, it was best to be cautious about these things.

"And to you," nodded the old wizard, doing his deputy the same courtesy. "How did the duelling tournament go, might I ask?"

"Not surprisingly, better than when Gilderoy tried," sighed the ex-cat. "Which is, I am sure you realize, not an exceptionally high bar."

"Indeed."

"Still, I am quite impressed with some of my students, I must say."

* * *

><p>The last practice session of the month of April for the second-year Gryffindors found them squelching somewhat muddily into the Transfiguration classroom, having just been rained on the entire way back from Herbology. They were short Neville, who had stayed behind in the greenhouses to help Professor Sprout with her rather rowdy Mandrakes; they were moody and temperamental this late in their growth cycle, and needed careful management. He would be a little bit late, though not a lot, and they had originally planned to start without him. But they arrived to find a rather unusual surprise, for all that April Fools' Day had been nearly an entire month before.<p>

"I'm not imagining that, right?" said Ron.

"Nah," said Seamus.

"That's illegal, right?" said Ron.

"Yep," said Parvati.

Thus it was that Neville came in fifteen minutes late to find his classmates still staring rather shockedly at the desk at the front of the room, upon which sat a parchment reading in neat, familiar script, _For my unusually dedicated students,_ and on top of that, a slim book which belonged very much to the Restricted Section of the Library: the revised 1928 translation of Rowena Ravenclaw's _Animali Fieri_, the original instruction manual on how to become an Animagus. _  
><em>

"That's definitely illegal," said Neville.

The others all nodded.

It was very, extremely, utterly illegal for minors to become Animagi. It was even more illegal than just trying to do it without a license. It was also supposed to be horrifyingly difficult and potentially dangerous, which in theory was why it was illegal. It was the sort of illegal that people got thrown in Azkaban for encouraging or enabling. You could get in trouble just for owning a copy of this book if you weren't on record with the Ministry as attempting to learn. You were supposed to have passed a Transfiguration NEWT with at least an E to even be allowed to _apply_ for a learning permit. They, on the other hand, were second-year students. Second-year students with better collective Transfiguration grades than any cohort in decades, sure, but second-year students. There was no way this was safe, or a good idea, or even possible.

And there was a cat, with very distinctive spectacle markings around its eyes, sitting calmly on Professor McGonagall's desk, smirking at them.


	50. Spirit and Opportunity

"I think Professor Flitwick's friends approve of you," said Penny brightly as she settled on the bench next to Percy, leaning slightly on his shoulder and smiling at him. She was talking, of course, about the wizards from the Auror Office who'd turned up to watch the duelling tournament, who apparently were old friends of Flitwick's. "Did you notice? They were looking at _you_ almost as much as Diggory."

Percy tried valiantly not to be offended, and ended up sighing. "I don't _want _to be a duellist," he objected.

"I know, I know," she waved his disgruntled expression off cheerfully, "but you looked good, and it never hurts to have good recommendations."

"From _MLE_?" said Percy, a little despairingly. He wanted to work for International Relations, and rather suspected that they were not interested in the same sort of people that Law Enforcement were. "They'll just think I'm _crazy_."

Penny frowned. "Hmm. Good point. Sorry." She deliberately changed the subject, picking something essentially at random. "Speaking of _suspicious_, you know that first-year girl I was telling you about, Lovegood, the one that's friends with your little sister?"

"Sure?" Percy had honestly not been paying that much attention to Ginny's social life. He just intermittently made sure she ate enough, and gave her Pepper-Up when she got sick. The fine details of who she sat with in classes or whatever were sort of lost on him.

His girlfriend gave him an amused look. "Anyway, she got detention _again_ for being in the library past curfew, and she will _not _shut up about the stupid Chamber of Secrets. Ginny - you should be proud of her - she's started telling the girl to stop being silly, I saw them arguing about it just yesterday."

"Oh, good for her," said Percy. "I hope she doesn't lose a friend over it, but I suppose if this first-year of yours _really_ thinks this silly myth is a plausible alternative hypothesis to _the Slytherins are being awful again_, maybe it's good riddance."

"Oh, probably," said Penny, "none of the other first-years seem to like her very much, anyway, I imagine your sister was just trying to be nice."

* * *

><p>The Gryffindor second-years normally blocked out a three-hour period on Monday evenings after dinner, to meet and practice duelling. They were always extremely scrupulous about getting back to the common room before curfew afterwards; no one really wanted to test McGonagall's patience further by treading on the rules even more obviously than they currently were. It wasn't actually against any specific rules to hang out in a classroom and throw hexes at each other, but it wasn't exactly the sort of behavior that professors normally encouraged. Neville had observed at one point that he thought their Head of House wasn't precisely being <em>accommodating <em>so much as she was sort of resigned.

This was, mind you, a conversation that took place _before _she all but handed them an extremely illegal Animagus manual._  
><em>

At that point it was sort of obvious to the entire group, even notoriously unobservant Ron Weasley, that Professor McGonagall was actually trying to help.

"I mean, unless she's trying to set us up," said Parvati, frowning at the book on the table. None of them had touched it yet. At the incredulous looks, she said somewhat apologetically, "Um, Padma gave me a lecture the other day about how sometimes things look like a good idea and they aren't - because of the thing at the duelling club - and it occurred to me that getting us to do something horribly illegal would be a really good way to get us all in huge trouble - sorry." She glanced a little nervously at the tabby cat curled up in the corner. The tabby cat completely ignored her.

"Wait, hold on, that's a good point," said Neville. Several incredulous looks, Parvati inclusive, turned on him. The spectacled cat in the corner gave him a rather severe look. He winced. "No, I mean, not _Professor McGonagall_ setting us up, that'd be silly, I mean, someone else. Trying to get _us _to do something horribly illegal that McGonagall would almost definitely get _blamed for_."

"Ohhh," said Lavender, speaking for everyone, "yeah, that would be bad."

"Uh ... " said Dean, after a moment's alarmed silence, "should we report this to Dumbledore, then?"

The cat helpfully turned into Professor McGonagall. They all jumped about a foot; Seamus actually yelped. The dramatic transformation mid-class-period was generally scheduled for the beginning of third-year Transfiguration class; none of them had actually seen her do that before. They'd just been assuming the cat was a spy or something. "It would be highly irresponsible of me to provide my underage students with any illegal study material," said Professor McGonagall airily, as if this were a completely normal conversation to be having, "and I'm sure that Headmaster Dumbledore would agree that the idea is ridiculous."

Translated: _Y__es, I did actually give you that book on purpose. Don't worry, you will not get in trouble and neither will I. _

" ... okay ... " said Ron, "so ... do we ... " he gestured vaguely at the book.

Professor McGonagall studiously pretended it was not there. "You should do your homework, Mr. Weasley," she said, and turned back into a cat.

"Is anyone else getting that feeling again that Hogwarts is just _unbearably strange?_" said Dean, somewhat helplessly.

"Oh, yeah, I get that all the time," said Lavender vaguely. She'd produced a _Witch Weekly_ magazine from somewhere and was flipping through it with a somewhat disgruntled expression. "Ugh, the first step is _meditation_, this is going to suck."

Everyone looked quizzically at her.

Seamus was the first to realize the Animagus book was no longer on the desk. "That's - is that the book, you've got it in your hand?"

"Uh, yeah?" said Lavender, looking up, confused.

"You look like you've got a Witch Weekly," explained Seamus. Lavender put the book down. It continued to look like a magazine. The six children all stared somewhat uneasily at it. Seamus suggested somewhat hesitantly, "Someone else want to pick it up?", and eventually Neville reached out and picked the 'magazine' off the table. It did not noticeably change shape.

Neville opened it up and said, "This is ... actually a Witch Weekly magazine?", tilting his head at it.

Ron said, "Give it back to Lavender," so Neville did.

Lavender reported that it was, so far as she could tell, still a book. "It doesn't even _look_ like a magazine to me," she said. "It just still looks like a paperback book with a weird Latin title."

"Um ... that's weird," said Ron.

"Is it?" asked Dean curiously. "Honestly, I assumed it was less weird than _people turning into animals._"

"No, yeah, that's really weird," agreed Neville. "Although, in retrospect, we should have assumed immediately that the cat was McGonagall. Ron, any other ideas?"

"Lavender, can you make it change shape if you try?" offered Ron.

Lavender gave the book/magazine a stern look and said, "Be a book!", and when they all failed to react as if it had obeyed this instruction, she shrugged helplessly. "I dunno, probably not?"

"Okay ... um ... you know, I've heard people say Hogwarts is _shy_, maybe the book is too, maybe it doesn't want to change if we're looking at it," suggested Ron. "Everybody turn around." They did. "Anything different, Lavender?"

"It ... still looks like a book to me?" said Lavender. "I don't think I can tell if it changes for you."

"Good point," admitted Ron. There was a pause for thought. "You try looking away too?"

Lavender said, "Okay," and after a beat, "I'm not looking at it anymore."

Ron turned around. "Okay, still looks like a magazine," he reported, "lemme pick it up - aha," he said triumphantly. "It's a book now."

Everyone else turned to look, without being told. "Looks like a copy of _Staple Spells for Duellists, volume three_," observed Neville. "I think it's changing into - what it thinks we're most likely to be reading?" _  
><em>

"It thinks I'm a bimbo," pouted Lavender.

"No, I don't think that's right," said Ron slowly, thoughtfully, "I think it's picking what _other people _are likely to think isn't strange. I've already read the whole Staple Spells series, I wouldn't actually be reading it again, but it's the _kind of thing _that a random person looking at me will think is totally normal and they won't question it."

"I guess that's a little better," allowed Lavender. "Still, though."

"Lav, I love you, but nobody who doesn't know you _really well_ thinks you aren't a total airhead," said Parvati, patting her friend affectionately on the shoulder.

"It's not a fatal personality flaw or anything," said Seamus cheerfully. "I don't actually _understand _Witch Weekly, but you can like it if you want, it's not my job to judge you." He shrugged, and Lavender smiled brilliantly at him. "Anyway, this is actually pretty good security, isn't it? If it won't change if more than one person is looking at it?"

"A little inconvenient," said Ron, frowning at the book, "because it probably means only one of us can see it at a time."

"True. But still," Seamus said, "I think it's worth it not to get caught with a book that changes shape, right?"

"Sure, so long as we don't leave it unattended long enough for someone _else _to get hold of it," said Ron thoughtfully. "I think we're going to have to take turns carrying it around."

The question of _how to not get instantly arrested _settled, they spent the rest of their three hours sitting in a circle as far away from the door as possible, taking turns reading aloud. This was supposedly so dangerous that people their age were banned from even trying it; they did not want to try _anything _until they were sure they weren't going to do something incredibly stupid. At first Parvati went to get parchment to take notes, but Ron pointed out that the _notes _wouldn't be protected from being read by other people. Dean then pulled out _his_ parchment and started making up pictorial mnemonics, which were not so transparent to observation, although they had the flaw that they were also meaningless to everyone else in the room.

That was solvable, though; getting arrested, less so.

The first step _was _going to be meditation, but the zeroth: studying.

* * *

><p>They actually got as far as the handshaking step, at the RavenclawGryffindor Quidditch game.

Roger Davies, now Ravenclaw's Quidditch Captain since Keith MacDougal had graduated, looked extremely relieved to see that the entire Gryffindor team seemed to be awake and not showing signs of reality warping. Still: "I promise not to gloat if we win because you're missing your real Beaters," he said apologetically. Oliver had produced substitutes, having had at least some notice. He'd come up with Cormac McLaggen and Geoff Hooper, who were both basically competent if annoying, but it was nothing like _actually_ replacing the twins, which would have been nigh unto impossible. So Gryffindor was were at a substantial disadvantage, even given that the new Ravenclaw Seeker, Cho Chang, was inexperienced; she was reasonably talented. "I mean, not that I won't still be proud," added Roger, "I mean, you guys are good, but I'll try not to - "

Roger stopped abruptly. He, along with everyone else, had just turned sharply at the sound of a horn, to see Professor McGonagall striding grimly onto the field, Lee Jordan's microphone in her hand. She announced, loudly and clearly, that the game was cancelled, and so was the rest of the Quidditch Cup, until further notice. There had been, she said, another attack. She completely and utterly disregarded Oliver and Roger's indignant yelling, and walked right up to Percy Weasley, and said, her sharp steely voice rather toneless, "Can I ask you to come with me, Mr. Weasley?"

"Um," said Percy. He glanced, helpless, into the stands. Ron - bless the Weasley hair - was easy to find, on his feet already. He looked like he was counting his friends. "Yeah, I - sure?"

"You don't seriously think _Prefect Weasley _did it?" said Cho Chang incredulously. "His _brothers _- "

"No, of course they don't - "

Oliver's voice, explaining to the others that the faculty probably wanted Percy for some boring crowd-control reason, trailed away as Percy followed McGonagall at a brisk walk up towards the castle. It was immediately obvious to Percy that although Oliver's guess had been reasonable, they were walking _away_ from most of the student body and so McGonagall probably wanted him for something unrelated to crowd control. He trailed his Head of House for several silent, confused minutes, and then when they were about halfway across the first floor, he said finally, "Um, professor, not that I'm not glad to help, but where are we - "

"Hospital wing," said Professor McGonagall.

"Hos - oh, no," said Percy, feeling his heart sinking. "Oh, no, don't - don't say you're about to tell me - "

"No one is dead," interrupted Professor McGonagall gently, as they crossed through the doors into the pristine white of the Hogwarts Hospital, "but - "

"_Penelope_," groaned Percy. His realization had been correct. He was here for emotional reasons, not practical ones. He didn't bother asking how Professor McGonagall had known before his brothers that Percy had a girlfriend; the Transfiguration professor was extremely observant and he and Penelope had NEWT Transfiguration together. Flitwick probably knew, too, although he couldn't imagine Snape or Lockhart cared enough to have bothered noticing. "Why wasn't she - she should have been at the game - who's that?" He nodded at the tiny girl on the bed next to Penelope's, absently. Most of his attention was on his Petrified girlfriend, on her frozen expression of shocked, disbelieving terror, but he was still at least approximately aware of other things. "Some first-year?"

"First-year Ravenclaw," agreed McGonagall. "Luna Lovegood. They were found by the library. This was on the floor nearby," she added, holding up a familiar-looking hand mirror.

"That's Penny's, yeah," said Percy. He frowned, something in his memory lighting up to remind him he'd heard that name before. "She doesn't _like _Luna Lovegood."

McGonagall made a frustrated face. "I was hoping you'd be able to shed some light on this."

"Sorry," sighed Percy. "No. I have no - well. I suppose I _do_ have some idea. Penny's Muggleborn, and she's been near as vocal as I have about not thinking that Slytherin's Monster is real. She's an obvious target." He made a face. "So like our Slytherins, isn't it, not realizing that shutting down a dissenting voice is as good as admitting she had a point."

"I see," said Professor McGonagall, her face much too neutral. "Quite so, Mr. Weasley."

* * *

><p>"I don't suppose," said Narcissa Malfoy to her husband over dinner one evening, quite acidly, "that you've learned anything interesting today?"<p>

Lucius Malfoy, who had spent all day in the library, sighed. He didn't really have the energy to be properly upset that his beloved wife was mad at him, and besides, she sort of had a point. He'd gone and tried to frame Arthur Weasley for a murder, and all that had happened is that Weasley's incompetent daughter had apparently lost the stupid magic book so thoroughly that her brothers had been the first, Petrified, targets. Followed by Lucius' own son, who was going to need a great deal of tutoring over the summer given how much school he was missing. If he tried to point at Ginevra Weasley now, he'd be laughed out of the Auror Office before anyone bothered to actually put her under Veritaserum and see that she actually had had the thing; they'd assume he was (a) holding a grudge and (b) crazy. And that was assuming the Auror Office would even _believe him_ that anything was going on at Hogwarts, nevermind that it had been caused by a magic blank diary. It wasn't like he could _admit _that he thought this because his father had told him the diary would kill Muggleborns if given to an impressionable young Hogwarts student. That would just get _him_ in trouble.

There was a long, expectant pause.

"Well," he said, after gathering his thoughts, "I learned that someone has put an Immolation Curse on Old Nott's son. I learned that Augusta Longbottom also knows about the attacks at Hogwarts and thinks that Arcturus Black is responsible despite the fact that he's dead, since she _doesn't _know about the book. I learned that there is considerable scholarly disagreement about whether Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets actually exists - that is to say, there are people who think it actually _does exist,_ even if they don't have much in the way of proof. I learned that Jared Nott either did not know about the attacks or has reason to pretend he didn't. I learned that Xenophilius Lovegood's daughter was among the most recent victims, the other of which was some Mudblood prefect."

"And from this information you have concluded?" prompted Narcissa, eyebrows slightly elevated.

"Theodore Nott and Ginevra Weasley are fighting over possession of the magic book, which either _actually_ gives access to the Chamber of Secrets or simply contains some great power which permits young children to cast Petrifaction Curses," said Lucius. "It's the only thing I can think of that explains all the victims so far. Although I'm not sure why _either _of them might have strong motivation to attack a Lovegood, knowing Xeno, she could just be extraordinarily annoying. And if the book _does _impart high-level knowledge of curses, that would explain how an eleven-year-old Weasley might have been able to lay such a curse on Theodore." _  
><em>

"But of course," said Narcissa, "you haven't shared this conclusion with your uncle."

"Of course not, I'm not an idiot," said Lucius. "He would assassinate the little Weasley in her sleep and I would get blamed instantly." _  
><em>

Narcissa nodded approvingly. "Has it occurred to you, however," she inquired, "that this chaos might be precisely what the Dark Lord intended when he gave that artifact to your father?"

This had, in fact, not occurred to Lucius. He'd just been assuming that the intended effect was for a bunch of Mudbloods to die and that he'd mucked it up somehow. But that would assume that the Dark Lord acted _reasonably_, with well-thought-out purpose. As opposed to, for instance, in whatever way he thought would cause the most pain for the most people. The Dark Lord liked to torture people for fun. It had been entirely naive of him to assume that any plan Voldemort had made would include provisions like 'don't hurt Draco,' as much as he wished it would have. "You have a point," he admitted. He glanced, almost involuntarily, at his left arm. "Bloody good thing it is that he's gone, isn't it?"

"Quite," said Narcissa, patting his hand. "So, in summary, what have you learned today?"

He sighed. "Don't try to use Dark artifacts if you don't know what they do."

"Very good, dear."

* * *

><p>Neville got a letter in the mail.<p>

_Dear Neville,_

_It may be of interest to you to know that Lord Malfoy seems to be the only person outside the walls of Hogwarts, save myself, who has heard about the Petrifactions. (Notice that this implies that he has an alternative source of information than whatever the administration has been telling parents, since Xenophilius Lovegood and Molly Weasley do not know.) His library has been of little other use to me, however; if Arcturus Black and Abraxas Malfoy laid a curse upon Hogwarts on their deathbeds, it was a curse I cannot break without going to Hogwarts myself. __  
><em>

_If you have Muggleborn friends, keep on your guard._

_A. M. Longbottom_

* * *

><p>The duelling club met again, largely run by Cedric Diggory, who had been the strongest voice encouraging people to show up. Percy Weasley did appear, to stalk about and give everyone baleful looks, but he had to do considerably less work. Without Professor Flitwick's Auror friends making everyone inclined to show off, Cedric was able to keep order with only occasional assistance from the remaining NEWT Defense students who deigned to attend. There were fewer people, as well, without the draw of Professor Lockhart (who had failed to appear for the last meeting). Professor Flitwick was there, but largely to supervise, not to lead; Cedric was doing a remarkable job of getting everyone working productively, and the charms professor had the sense not to intervene.<p>

The second-year Gryffindors showed up, and mostly did the drills Cedric had pulled from books and practiced against each other and the few other students from their class year who had turned up. Padma and Parvati started trying to work together against various permutations of their classmates, which usually worked reasonably well.

Ron Weasley drew some attention for his desire to duel anyone who was willing, regardless of how many years they had on him.

He lost, of course, every time, varying degrees of spectacularly. Most of the students here were fourth years and above, and Ron, for all his reading over the past months, had had very little actual, practical experience with duelling.

"Why are you still trying, Weasley?" said Adrian Pucey, almost curiously, as Flitwick _ennervated _him for roughly the twelfth time.

"Losing's how you learn," said Ron.

Cedric said brightly, "That's the spirit."


End file.
